It’s an old joke at this point—the hipster’s retro-obses­sion with vinyl is an affec­ta­tion as bogus as lou­vered sun­glass­es and high-waist­ed acid washed jeans, right? Well, there are plen­ty of peo­ple who buy records and lis­ten to them, too. There are even peo­ple who buy and lis­ten to cas­sette tapes, imag­ine that! You can count me in both camps, and it isn’t because—or only because—I love the look and feel of these ana­log cul­tur­al arti­facts or that I’m nos­tal­gic for sim­pler times. It’s because I love the sound. Even cheapo cas­sette tapes can often sound bet­ter to me than the medi­um of music we’ve all grown so accus­tomed to over the last decade or so—the MP3.

Begin­ning in the CD era, the so-called “Loud­ness Wars” more or less killed the dynam­ics of record­ed music, push­ing every sound to the absolute limit—from the most del­i­cate­ly plucked acoustic gui­tar string to a black met­al singer’s most demon­ic roar. With­out the pleas­ing push-pull of musi­cal dynam­ics, songs lose their depth and pow­er. Once the music is released as prod­uct, it suf­fers anoth­er indig­ni­ty in the data com­pres­sion of MP3s and stream­ing ser­vices, for­mats that—according to high-end audio com­pa­ny Harmon—“have dimin­ished the qual­i­ty and flat­tened the emo­tion” of music. In the short film above, The Dis­tor­tion of Sound, Har­mon brings togeth­er a num­ber of engi­neers, pro­duc­ers, and musi­cians, includ­ing big names like Quin­cy Jones, Slash, Hans Zim­mer, and Snoop Dogg to dis­cuss what Har­mon acoustic engi­neer Dr. Sean Olive, calls “the val­ley of sound qual­i­ty” we’ve sup­pos­ed­ly reached in the last five years.

Harmon’s Chief Engi­neer Chris Lud­wig claims that data com­pres­sion (not audio compression—a dif­fer­ent tech­nol­o­gy), “removes up to 90% of the orig­i­nal song.” With our low-qual­i­ty MP3s and cheap, tin­ny ear­buds and lap­top speak­ers, says Zim­mer, we’ve become “a McDonald’s gen­er­a­tion of music con­sumers.” It’s a depress­ing real­i­ty for audio­philes and musi­cians, but Har­mon has the solu­tion and Dis­tor­tion of Sound is essen­tial­ly an adver­tise­ment for it. Whether or not you buy in is your call, but along the way, you’ll get an inter­est­ing intro­duc­tion to the record­ing process and the his­to­ry of record­ed music. Scroll down to the bot­tom of the “Dis­tor­tion of Sound” page to see how Har­mon is “bring­ing sound qual­i­ty back.” They aren’t doing it with tape decks and turnta­bles.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Neil Young Reveals the New Killer Gad­get That Will Save Music

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

How many reunions will it take before we’ve final­ly seen the end of Pink Floyd? I’m not com­plain­ing, mind you, but mar­veling at how durable an out­fit the band has been for their fifty-year, on again, off again his­to­ry. Yet aside from the occa­sion­al char­i­ty show, they’ve most­ly been off, hav­ing sup­pos­ed­ly called it quits after 1994’s Divi­sion Bell. As the A.V. Club reminds us, “Pink Floyd has not real­ly exist­ed since Pulp Fic­tion was in the­aters.” Now, after twen­ty years of dor­man­cy, they’re back with a new album, The End­less Riv­er—David Gilmour and Nick Mason’s rework­ing of Divi­sion Bell sessions—due out Novem­ber 10th (see a track­list and hear teasers here). “It’s a shame,” Gilmour tells Rolling Stone, “but this [album] is the end.”

Yeah, we’ve heard that before. This time, it’ll prob­a­bly stick. Key­boardist Richard Wright died in 2008 (the new album is a trib­ute to him), Gilmour and Roger Waters have had a most­ly icy rela­tion­ship, and drum­mer Nick Mason has chan­neled his pas­sion, and for­tune, into clas­sic cars. But it does seem like­ly that they’ll take the stage again, at least for a one-off per­for­mance, as they have a hand­ful of times through­out the years.

Today in trib­ute to their longevi­ty, or their refusal to fade away, we bring you a few of those reunion shows, begin­ning at the top with their Live 8 reunion con­cert in London’s Hyde Park in 2005, a ben­e­fit orga­nized by their old friend Bob Geld­of to coin­cide with the G8 sum­mit. This con­cert is the last time all four mem­bers would play on stage togeth­er, joined by a host of guest musi­cians, and they sound amaz­ing. Gilmour ruled out any fur­ther shows after this, but then two years lat­er, he joined Waters onstage at an event for the Hop­ing Foun­da­tion to ben­e­fit Pales­tin­ian chil­dren. See them play for an inti­mate crowd of just 200 in the video above.

While Roger Waters offi­cial­ly left the band in 1985 on acri­mo­nious terms, he has con­tin­ued to tour both his solo mate­r­i­al and his Floyd music, per­form­ing a solo ver­sion of the The Wall Live to huge audi­ences in North Amer­i­ca and Europe since 2010. At one of those shows, in 2011 at London’s O2 Are­na, Gilmour joined him onstage—atop the wall—for “Com­fort­ably Numb” (above), then returned with a man­dolin, and Nick Mason with a tam­bourine, for “Out­side the Wall” (below).

It seems cyn­i­cal to call the remain­ing mem­bers’ occa­sion­al appear­ances togeth­er oppor­tunis­tic since they gen­er­al­ly only occur at char­i­ty events. But giv­en how long it’s been since they’ve released any­thing new, we might well ask, as the title of their 2011 remas­ter project has it, “Why Pink Floyd?” Why new music, and why now? Since their spaced-out psy­che­del­ic debut, they’ve made increas­ing­ly thought­ful, fine­ly-craft­ed albums for very patient lis­ten­ers, veer­ing into rock opera, stretch­ing out into space opera, becom­ing more and more cin­e­mat­ic in scope. It’s those long, com­plex arrange­ments (like Wish You Were Here and 1977’s Ani­mals), tied togeth­er by Gilmour’s soar­ing gui­tar lines and Wright’s moody key­boards, that hold up best, I think, at least for devot­ed fans, and that’s exact­ly what we can expect from The End­less Riv­er. See Gilmour and Mason dis­cuss the new album, and hear some stun­ning audio sam­ples, at the band’s web­site.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Lost Record­ing of Pink Floyd Play­ing with Jazz Vio­lin­ist Stéphane Grap­pel­li on “Wish You Were Here”

Pink Floyd Plays With Their Brand New Singer & Gui­tarist David Gilmour on French TV (1968)

Watch Doc­u­men­taries on the Mak­ing of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here

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

The jazz stan­dard “Body and Soul” was first per­formed live in Lon­don by singer Gertrude Lawrence in 1930, and then record­ed lat­er that year by the great Louis Arm­strong. But Cole­man Hawkins cut the most his­toric ver­sion on Octo­ber 11, 1939 — exact­ly 75 years ago today. The Mis­souri-born musi­cian made the record­ing almost by acci­dent, on a spur-of-the-moment-deci­sion, and he had no inkling that he had cre­at­ed the first com­mer­cial hit of a pure jazz record­ing.

He lat­er mused,“It’s fun­ny how it became such a clas­sic.” “Even the ordi­nary pub­lic is crazy about it. It’s the first and only record I ever heard of that all the squares dig as well as the jazz peo­ple, and I don’t under­stand how and why, because I was mak­ing notes all the way. I was­n’t mak­ing a melody for the squares. I thought noth­ing of it. I did­n’t even both­er to lis­ten to it after­wards.”

For jazz his­to­ri­ans, the song is rec­og­nized as one of the “ear­ly tremors of bebop.” That’s large­ly because “Hawkins hints at the song’s melody dur­ing his first six bars, but he is impro­vis­ing right from the start, nev­er actu­al­ly stat­ing the theme,” writes Ken­ny Berg­er in The Oxford Com­pan­ion to Jazz.

In 2004, the Library of Con­gress placed Hawk­in’s record­ing into the Nation­al Record­ing Reg­istry. Above, you can lis­ten to the land­mark 1939 ver­sion and also watch Hawkins per­form “Body and Soul” live in 1967 at Nor­man Granz’s Jazz at the Phil­har­mon­ic.

A spe­cial thanks goes to Michael for flag­ging this anniver­sary for us.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

10 Great Per­for­mances From 10 Leg­endary Jazz Artists: Djan­go, Miles, Monk, Coltrane & More

Philoso­pher Jacques Der­ri­da Inter­views Jazz Leg­end Ornette Cole­man: Talk Impro­vi­sa­tion, Lan­guage & Racism (1997)

Haru­ki Murakami’s Pas­sion for Jazz: Dis­cov­er the Novelist’s Jazz Playlist, Jazz Essay & Jazz Bar