Blank on Blank has worked their mag­ic again, this time ani­mat­ing a 1968 inter­view with the singer-song­writer and civ­il rights activist, Nina Simone. As always, Blank on Blank’s visu­al work is a treat. But what stands out for me here is the audio record­ing. Tak­en from a 1960s radio show host­ed by Lil­ian Ter­ry, the audio orig­i­nal­ly aired in Italy in the 1960s. And, until now, it has nev­er been heard in the Unit­ed States. Ter­ry is nowa­days work­ing on an audio­book project called Voic­es from the Jazz Dimen­sion that “chron­i­cles her remark­able col­lec­tion of inter­views with jazz leg­ends from Nina to Duke Elling­ton.” We can hard­ly wait for that project to take final shape. You can find more Blank on Blank ani­ma­tions, all of which revive vin­tage audio clips, in our archive.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Nina Simone Sings Her Break­through Song, ‘I Loves You Por­gy,’ in 1962

Free Archive of Audio Inter­views with Rock, Jazz & Folk Leg­ends Now on iTunes

Jazz on the Tube: An Archive of 2,000 Clas­sic Jazz Videos (and Much More)

I’ve been play­ing gui­tar off and on for most of my life, and I’d be the first to admit that I’m not the most spec­tac­u­lar musi­cian. I do it for joy and don’t sweat my musi­cal lim­i­ta­tions too much. This is a good thing; oth­er­wise I might find myself seething with mad envy—like F. Mur­ray Abraham’s Salieri—upon real­iz­ing that in 15 life­times I’d nev­er be as good as young French prodi­gy Tina S is at 15 years of age. Tina has sent gui­tar nerds every­where flee­ing to their bed­rooms, work­ing their fin­gers bloody in furi­ous efforts to match her speed and accu­ra­cy. Watch her flaw­less­ly rip through Yng­wie Malmsteen’s “Arpeg­gios from Hell” above, ye mighty shred­ders, and despair. See her destroy Steve Vai’s “Pagani­ni 5th Caprice (Cross­roads)” below, ye mon­sters of rock, and rend your den­im vests asun­der with grief.

The baroque speed met­al of Malm­steen and Vai aren’t real­ly my bag, but I have to say, there’s maybe a lit­tle Salieri voice cack­ling into the void in the back of my mind when I watch Tina’s videos. Maybe she’s a one-trick-pony, it tells me, play­ing arpeg­gios all day like a few hun­dred oth­er gui­tarists in the audi­tion line for a hun­dred met­al bands in a hun­dred cities a day—players who couldn’t slow down and play the blues if they were heav­i­ly med­icat­ed.

So says my inner Salieri. But no, there she is below, flaw­less­ly pulling off the “Com­fort­ably Numb” solo, her bends and slides so impec­ca­bly timed I could close my eyes and almost swear it’s David Gilmour. Sigh and alas.

But can she do Van Halen, you right­ly ask? Because, you know, any­one can play Malm­steen, Vai, and Gilmour, but Eddie Van Halen, c’mon…. Yet there she is below, with a sear­ing ren­di­tion of “Erup­tion,” a song gui­tarists who learn Van Halen often avoid for rea­sons that will like­ly become evi­dent when you see Tina play it. Is she too much tech­nique, too lit­tle soul, you say? Yeah, well, she’s 15, and bet­ter than most of us are at twice that age. Com­ments on her videos include the fol­low­ing: “I want to throw my gui­tar out the win­dow” and “This makes me want to kill myself.” In all seri­ous­ness, I hope any­one who gen­uine­ly feels this way seeks help. Also in all seri­ous­ness, don’t despair. Do what you do and enjoy it. And maybe after many long life­times you’ll be reborn as a Parisian gui­tar prodi­gy.

That Tina S has obvi­ous nat­ur­al abil­i­ty in no way means she hasn’t had to work hard for this lev­el of skill. On the con­trary, any­one this good gets there through end­less reg­u­lar prac­tice and the guid­ance of a tal­ent­ed teacher (in this case, French gui­tarist Renaud Louis-Ser­vais). Tina post­ed her first video in 2008 at the ten­der age of 8, play­ing a com­po­si­tion by gui­tarist Maria Lin­ne­mann. You can see her below hon­ing the clas­si­cal chops that she lat­er put to ludi­crous­ly fast use on a met­al trib­ute to Vival­di.

But does she do Mozart? Not so far on her Youtube chan­nel, where you’ll find more ear­ly acoustic per­for­mances, like “Let it Be” and “Hotel Cal­i­for­nia,” and more recent shred­fests like Jason Becker’s “Alti­tudes.” To learn just how Tina views her own musi­cian­ship and sees her future as a gui­tarist, read this inter­view with her on the Gui­tar Chan­nel. “I have not yet start­ed my career as a gui­tarist,” she dead­pans. Many would-be Salieris have already sworn to end theirs after watch­ing her videos.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Four­teen-Year-Old Girl’s Blis­ter­ing Heavy Met­al Per­for­mance of Vival­di

Great Vio­lin­ists Play­ing as Kids: Itzhak Perl­man, Anne-Sophie Mut­ter, & More

The Gui­tar Prodi­gy from Karachi

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

Update: Neil deGrasse Tyson just put it right. Now we know what it sounds like when doves cry.

We’re just get­ting the sad news that the artist Prince Rogers Nelson–otherwise sim­ply known as Prince–has appar­ent­ly died at the age of 57. Here you can watch him per­form some of his ear­li­est hits, back in 1982. In the hours to come, we’ll have more on Prince and his influ­en­tial career.

The empire of Prince is a tight­ly con­trolled king­dom, ruled by an enig­mat­ic and eccen­tric musi­cal genius with a leg­en­dar­i­ly con­tentious rela­tion­ship with the music indus­try. For most of the nineties, he was referred to as “the artist for­mer­ly known as Prince,” hav­ing changed his name to an unpro­nounce­able sym­bol to spite his label Warn­er Bros. “Dur­ing that time,” writes Rolling Stone, “sales of his new music slowed down sig­nif­i­cant­ly, but he still man­aged to get his point across.”

You have to admire an artist—even one as wealthy and suc­cess­ful as Prince—willing to take a finan­cial hit for the sake of prin­ci­ple. In his most recent stand (though it prob­a­bly won’t cost him any­thing worth men­tion­ing in stream­ing rev­enue), Prince removed all of his music this past sum­mer from every stream­ing ser­vice except Jay‑Z’s Tidal. So we’re very lucky to have the black-and-white taped live per­for­mance here from 1982 at New Jersey’s Capi­tol The­atre (released by The Music Vault), two years before he hit his 80s peak with the release of Pur­ple Rain the film and album.

What­ev­er you think of Pur­ple Rain the movie (actress Apol­lo­nia Kotero was nom­i­nat­ed for a Razz­ie for worst new star, and her Prince-penned song “Sex Shoot­er” for worst orig­i­nal song), no one can deny the absolute pop bril­liance of the album. It’s hard to pick a favorite; most of us can sing the cho­rus­es to “Let’s Go Crazy,” “When Doves Cry,” or “I Would Die 4 U” in our sleep. That said, Prince had already released some of the finest music of his career by the time he appeared at this New Jer­sey con­cert, includ­ing one of my per­son­al favorites, “Con­tro­ver­sy” (top) from the 1981 album of the same name and “I Wan­na Be Your Lover” (above) from 1979’s Prince.

We don’t get any­thing from the year’s ground­break­ing 1999, the first album to fea­ture the Rev­o­lu­tion, but we do get clas­sics of the sleazy sex-god first phase of the Pur­ple One’s career, includ­ing “Jack U Off,” above, in which Prince pulls out some clas­sic male-strip­per-does-jazzer­size dance moves while the band rips through the rau­cous stom­per of a tune at almost punk tem­po and vol­ume. These three songs rep­re­sent three of facets Prince as an artist: There’s the agi­tat­ed social com­men­ta­tor, the sen­si­tive, pin­ing lover, and the unre­pen­tant horn­dog. He’s empha­sized one or anoth­er of these per­sona over the course of his career, mod­u­lat­ing them with the funked-up futur­ist char­ac­ter he evolved into as the decade pro­gressed.

Prince’s attempts at film star­dom most­ly fall into the so-bad-they’re-good cat­e­go­ry, begin­ning with rock opera Pur­ple Rain. But few know that he intend­ed to release his first cel­lu­loid effort around the time of this con­cert. It was to be called The Sec­ond Com­ing, to accom­pa­ny a scrapped album of the same name. Hear him sing the unre­leased, gospel-inspired title song above, whose lyrics recall one of Michael Jackson’s social­ly con­scious anthems and include the line “How many more good men must die before there’s gun con­trol.” To learn more about that ill-fat­ed film project, read this inter­view with the pro­posed direc­tor Chuck Statler, the “god­fa­ther of the music video,” here. And to see the full Capi­tol The­atre show, check it out on Youtube here, or right down below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

35 Years of Prince’s Hair­styles in 15 Glo­ri­ous Sec­onds!

Watch a Young Bob Mar­ley and The Wail­ers Per­form Live in Eng­land (1973): For His 70th Birth­day Today

The Clash Live in Tokyo, 1982: Watch the Com­plete Con­cert

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