We think of the eight­ies and ear­ly nineties as the age of music video, as pre­dict­ed by the Bug­gles all the way back in ‘79. There’s pre­cious lit­tle rea­son to argue with the cul­tur­al pre­science of their “Video Killed the Radio Star,” the very first video MTV aired. After the rise of the music chan­nel, almost no one could push a sin­gle with­out a video in the rota­tion on cable. Even now, though MTV may have ced­ed the whole music video thing to the inter­net a long time ago, the prin­ci­ple remains.

Yet well over a decade before MTV debuted, pio­neer­ing musi­cians took to music video (or film) with the same nat­ur­al affin­i­ty as Michael Jack­son, Phil Collins, Prince, or Van Halen did dur­ing the network’s hey­day. Over a decade before the Buggles—a pun on The Beatles—there was, well… The Bea­t­les, bona fide music video stars, with hip pro­mos like that for “Pen­ny Lane,” above, which would have fit right in on MTV. (“Is that Oasis?” “No, it’s The Bea­t­les, man!”)

Shot in 1968 in East Lon­don, an estate in Kent, and Liv­er­pool (home of the real Pen­ny Lane), the video achieved its mod­ern look by chance, since direc­tor Peter Gold­mann had to find cre­ative ways to get around a Musi­cians’ Union ban on mim­ing for the cam­era. Before the ban, filmed musi­cal per­for­mances typ­i­cal­ly fea­tured bands lip-sync­ing to a back­ing track, as you can see in the pro­mo video for “Hel­lo, Good­bye” above, which debuted on the Ed Sul­li­van show in Novem­ber, 1967. This one was direct­ed by Sir Paul him­self, though he did not enjoy the expe­ri­ence, as he lat­er recount­ed. “It was some­thing I’d always been inter­est­ed in,” McCart­ney said, “until I actu­al­ly tried it.”

That Musi­cians’ Union mim­ing ban was still in place when the band went into the Abbey Road stu­dios in 1968 to record the video for “Hey Jude,” above. Direc­tor Michael Lind­say-Hogg got around it by invit­ing an audi­ence of 300 peo­ple into the stu­dio for the finale, mak­ing it seem like a live per­for­mance, though every­thing was pre­re­cord­ed but Paul’s vocals. The sin­gle had already gone on sale a week pri­or to film­ing, but the pro­mo film was the first intro­duc­tion many fans had to the song, first on David Frost’s The Frost Report, then on The Smoth­ers Broth­ers’ Com­e­dy Hour in the U.S. a month lat­er. In the first minute of the video, the band goofs around with some fake jazz (prov­ing that their gui­tars were, in fact, plugged in).

Though the “Hey Jude” film was shot in col­or, no orig­i­nal view­ers would have seen it that way. As Dan­ger­ous Minds points out, we get to view this video “in far, far bet­ter qual­i­ty than you’d ever have been able to see it dur­ing those orig­i­nal tele­vi­sion broad­casts, back when most peo­ple in Britain and Amer­i­ca would have been watch­ing it on low res­o­lu­tion B&W TV sets.” Com­pare, for exam­ple, the short clip from a broad­cast at the time above with the pris­tine “Hey Jude” video we have now. All of these Bea­t­les videos have been restored and dig­i­tal­ly enhanced in HD, and you can see these and more at The Bea­t­les Vevo chan­nel on Youtube. These come from the re-release of sin­gles col­lec­tion 1 on Blu-ray, which includes sev­er­al dozen more videos in addi­tion to 27 of the band’s #1 sin­gles.

Par­tic­u­lar­ly strik­ing is the 1967 pro­mo for “A Day in the Life,” above, edit­ed from film­ing of the orig­i­nal ses­sions. As The Bea­t­les Youtube chan­nel informs us, “this was no ordi­nary record­ing ses­sion. The clas­si­cal musi­cians, who had been asked to wear evening dress, took it upon them­selves to wear fake noses, fun­ny hats and gen­er­al­ly enter into the spir­it of the occa­sion.” The ses­sions were “filmed between 8pm and 1am with guests includ­ing Mick Jag­ger and Kei­th Richards,” both of whom you’ll see appear in the fray of musi­cians, along with many shots of Paul McCart­ney con­duct­ing the orches­tra.

Did The Bea­t­les invent the music video? That’s a debate for the forums. But they were sure­ly one of the first, if not the first, to use them as a pri­ma­ry pro­mo­tion­al tool—along with their films and mer­chan­dis­ing. As far back as 1965, the band released pro­mo films for their sin­gles, like that for “We Can Work it Out,” above, one of three dif­fer­ent videos the band shot for this song. In fact, it’s not anachro­nism to refer to this ear­ly exam­ple of the form as a “music video” since it was actu­al­ly shot on two-inch black and white video­tape. The for­mat had not come into wide enough use at the time, so it was dis­trib­uted on 16mm film.

Mak­ing music videos—on video—is just one of the many ways The Bea­t­les have antic­i­pat­ed, or pre­cip­i­tat­ed, the future of music. One of the ways they’ve lagged behind, or per­haps wise­ly held out, is in releas­ing their music to stream­ing and on-demand ser­vices like Spo­ti­fy, Google Play, or Apple Music.  That’s changed as of today, when 13 albums and four com­pi­la­tions become avail­able to stream on nine sub­scrip­tion ser­vices. No telling what Lennon and Har­ri­son would have thought, but Paul McCart­ney described the music’s dig­i­tal recep­tion as “fan­tas­tic” when the band first made a deal with iTunes in 2010. The remain­ing band mem­bers have released no state­ment this time around but a short pro­mo video and a jol­ly hol­i­day greet­ing: “Hap­py Crim­ble, with love from us to you.”

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Bea­t­les’ Rooftop Con­cert: The Last Gig Filmed in Jan­u­ary 1969

Lis­ten to the Bea­t­les’ Christ­mas Records: Sev­en Vin­tage Record­ings for Their Fans (1963 – 1969)

Down­load The Bea­t­les’ Yel­low Sub­ma­rine as a Free, Inter­ac­tive eBook

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

This morn­ing, Josh Jones high­light­ed for you the new HD ver­sions of Bea­t­les videos on Youtube, and, along the way men­tioned that, start­ing today, the Bea­t­les’ music cat­a­log — 13 albums and 4 com­pi­la­tions — would become avail­able on var­i­ous music stream­ing ser­vices, includ­ing Spo­ti­fy. The switch has been flipped on all of that, and below, you can find a Spo­ti­fy playlist of the Bea­t­les’ albums. 14 hours of Bea­t­les bliss.

You can also access the Spo­ti­fy playlist on the web here. If you need to down­load Spo­ti­fy, find it here.

Relat­ed Con­tent

A 68 Hour Playlist of Shakespeare’s Plays Being Per­formed by Great Actors: Giel­gud, McK­ellen & More

A Playlist of 172 Songs from Wes Ander­son Sound­tracks: From Bot­tle Rock­et to The Grand Budapest Hotel

An 18-Hour Playlist of Read­ings by the Beats: Ker­ouac, Gins­berg & Even Bukows­ki Too

Since 1999, the French jug­gling group Les Objets Volants (The Fly­ing Objects) have been enter­tain­ing audi­ences world­wide. Beyond jug­gling, their shows incor­po­rate ele­ments of the­ater, visu­al arts and even math­e­mat­ics. And the group takes spe­cial pride in explor­ing new ways of han­dling and manip­u­lat­ing every­day objects. Which brings us to the per­for­mance above. There you can see Les Objets Volants per­form Bach’s Prélude N°1. (which more typ­i­cal­ly sounds some­thing like this) on “boomwhack­ers,” those hol­low, col­or-cod­ed, plas­tic per­cus­sion tubes, which are tuned to dif­fer­ent musi­cal pitch­es. Record­ed last March, the clip is an out­take from a Les Objets Volants show called “Liai­son Car­bone,” which explores con­cepts in physics. Enjoy.

via Digg

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stream the Com­plete Works of Bach & Beethoven: 250 Free Hours of Music

All of Bach Is Putting Videos of 1,080 Bach Per­for­mances Online

Down­load the Com­plete Organ Works of J.S. Bach for Free

The Genius of J.S. Bach’s “Crab Canon” Visu­al­ized on a Möbius Strip

“I was told that some of you dudes don’t know any­thing about blues,” he said from the stage before begin­ning what he would go on to call the one of the great­est shows of his career: “So I wan­na say this to you: I came to swap some with you. I imag­ine that quite a few of you dudes have the blues already.” After a lit­tle more friend­ly ban­ter and an acknowl­edg­ment that it is Thanks­giv­ing Day, B.B. King launch­es into “Down­heart­ed” (or “How Blue Can You Get”) in front of his admir­ing audi­ence of inmates at Sing Sing Cor­rec­tion­al Facil­i­ty in Ossin­ing, New York.

It is three years after John­ny Cash per­formed at San Quentin (four years after his Fol­som con­cert) and one year after Nixon declared the “war on drugs” and began the peri­od of mass incar­cer­a­tion that has reached epi­dem­ic pro­por­tions today.

The con­cert at Sing Sing includ­ed not only King but also per­for­mances from come­di­an Jim­my Walk­er (J.J. from Good Times, who intro­duces King at the top), ensem­ble vocal group Voic­es of East Harlem, and Joan Baez and her sis­ter Mimi Far­iña, who you can see below sing “I Shall Be Released” and “Viva mi patria Bolivia.” In-between the stars per­for­mances, inmates put on a play and recit­ed orig­i­nal poet­ry.

Baez, as you’ll see, was very well received, but the star of the night was King. The entire show was cap­tured on film by doc­u­men­tary direc­tor David Hoff­man, who had been teach­ing film at the prison and who orga­nized the show. In the clips above, Hoff­man shows us sev­er­al close-ups of the inmates’ faces in beau­ti­ful­ly human­iz­ing por­traits rem­i­nis­cent of the pho­tographs of Gor­don Parks. You can see Hoff­man below briefly describe the cir­cum­stances of the con­cert before anoth­er clip of the “Down­heart­ed” per­for­mance and more.

See a few more clips from the con­cert on Youtube here, and buy a copy of the com­plete DVD here (Richard and Mimi Fariña’s web­site has a com­plete list­ing of per­for­mances). The Sing Sing con­cert had an impact on the per­form­ers as well as the inmates. Baez wrote an orig­i­nal song for the film’s cred­its (below) and her sis­ter Mimi was inspired after­ward to found Bread & Ros­es, which orga­nizes con­certs for peo­ple in hos­pi­tals, home­less shel­ters, pris­ons, and oth­er insti­tu­tions (“any­where they serve Jell‑O,” joked come­di­an Don Nov­el­lo).

This was not the first time King had per­formed at a prison. The year pre­vi­ous, in 1971, he put on a con­cert at Chicago’s Cook Coun­ty Jail. The result­ing record made Rolling Stone’s 500 best albums list, though it didn’t mer­it the most favor­able review from the mag­a­zine. Nonethe­less, All­mu­sic pro­nounced it a “live album with some real sparks to it,” and “pos­si­bly the best live ver­sion of ‘The Thrill is Gone’ of all its many incar­na­tions.” Hear it below and decide for your­self, and hear the full Cook Coun­ty live album here.

Of that ear­li­er prison con­cert, King’s key­boardist Ron Levy remarked, “If any­body had the blues, it was those peo­ple incar­cer­at­ed. And B.B. real­ly felt com­pas­sion for those guys…. Peo­ple don’t real­ize B.B. King was much more than just a musi­cian and enter­tain­er. He’s a human being, a human­i­tar­i­an. He cared. He’s one of the real­ly good guys. There aren’t many like him in his­to­ry. He’s not just the king of the blues. He’s one of the kings of human­i­ty.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Thrill is Gone: See B.B. King Play in Two Elec­tric Live Per­for­mances

B.B. King Explains in an Ani­mat­ed Video Whether You Need to Endure Hard­ship to Play the Blues

B.B. King Changes Bro­ken Gui­tar String Mid-Song at Farm Aid, 1985 and Doesn’t Miss a Beat

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

When you think Christ­mas, you prob­a­bly think recent­ly deceased Stone Tem­ple Pilots singer Scott Wei­land, no? No, you prob­a­bly don’t, but he made a Christ­mas record all the same in 2011 (see his “Win­ter Won­der­land” video above). You might say crit­ics didn’t love it, but that’s not real­ly the point. Artists often record Christ­mas records as nov­el­ty items for shop­pers on a tear to snatch up and shove in the bas­ket with oth­er last-minute detri­tus. It seems like com­mon wis­dom that if you get your Christ­mas album on a Star­bucks or Tar­get prod­uct dis­play, you’ll prob­a­bly have a pret­ty hap­py new year.

But then there are the rare excep­tions, Christ­mas albums made with care, by artists who sure­ly want­ed to make mon­ey, but who also made some­thing unique­ly great of well-worn hol­i­day clas­sics, or penned new ones of their own. There is, of course, the most­ly instru­men­tal jazz great­ness of Vince Guaraldi’s Char­lie Brown Christ­mas sound­track. But have you heard instru­men­tal surf-rock leg­ends The Ven­tures Christ­mas album? It’s out­stand­ing. You’re inti­mate­ly famil­iar with The Jack­son 5’s bril­liant soul ren­di­tions of songs like “San­ta Claus is Com­ing to Town,” but you haven’t yet begun to yule­tide, I say, until you’ve put on James Brown’s Funky Christ­mas, fea­tur­ing such orig­i­nal tunes as “Go Pow­er at Christ­mas Time” and the heart­felt plea on behalf of impov­er­ished kids, “San­ta Claus Go Straight to the Ghet­to.”

We’ve got these albums and many more greats—from Bob Dylan, John­ny Cash, The Beach Boys, Willie Nel­son, Ella Fitzger­ald, Elvis Pres­ley etc.—compiled in the Spo­ti­fy playlist above, where they rub shoul­ders with unex­pect­ed gems from indie band Low, punk rock­ers Bad Reli­gion, and hor­ror leg­end Christo­pher Lee, whose Heavy Met­al Christ­mas and Heavy Met­al Christ­mas Too should be required lis­ten­ing at every hol­i­day par­ty. Host­ing one of your own? Pull up our playlist of Christ­mas music worth hear­ing, hit play, and enjoy many qual­i­ty hours of jazz, funk, coun­try, soul, and rock and roll cheer and tid­ings. These sug­ges­tions come to us via Rolling Stone, Com­plex, and our read­ers on Twit­ter. If you need to down­load Spo­ti­fy’s soft­ware, get it here. You can find a com­plete list of the albums below, with links to pur­chase them, should you need a last minute gift.

James Brown’s Funky Christ­mas

John­ny Cash — The Clas­sic Christ­mas Album

The Beach Boys’ Christ­mas Album

Louis Arm­strong and Friends — What a Won­der­ful Christ­mas

A Motown Christ­mas

Elvis’ Christ­mas Album

A Christ­mas Gift for You from Phil Spec­tor

A Char­lie Brown Christ­mas

Bob Dylan, Christ­mas in the Heart

We Wish You a Met­al Xmas … And a Head­bang­ing New Year

The Ven­tures’ Christ­mas Album

Jacob Miller, Nat­ty Christ­mas

A Very She and Him Christ­mas

A Very Spe­cial Christ­mas Vol­ume 1

A Jol­ly Christ­mas from Frank Sina­tra

Willie Nel­son, Pret­ty Paper

Ella Wish­es You a Swing­ing Christ­mas

Soul Christ­mas

Bing Cros­by, White Christ­mas

Christ­mas on Death Row

Christ­mas with the Rat Pack

The Jack­son 5 Christ­mas Album

Suf­jan Stevens, Songs for Christ­mas

Emmy­lou Har­ris, Light of the Sta­ble

James Brown, Soul­ful Christ­mas

Car­pen­ters’ Christ­mas Col­lec­tion

Low, Christ­mas

Bad Reli­gion, Christ­mas Songs

Christo­pher Lee, Heavy Met­al Christ­mas and Heavy Met­al Christ­mas Too

Squir­rel Nut Zip­pers, Christ­mas Car­a­van

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to the Bea­t­les’ Christ­mas Records: Sev­en Vin­tage Record­ings for Their Fans (1963 – 1969)

John­ny Cash’s Christ­mas Spe­cials, Fea­tur­ing June Carter, Steve Mar­tin, Andy Kauf­man & More (1976–79)

John Waters Makes Hand­made Christ­mas Cards, Says the “Whole Pur­pose of Life is Christ­mas”

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