You may not find the ref­er­ence eas­i­ly in a Google search. But hang around elec­tron­ic musi­cians, DJs, or pro­duc­ers long enough, and you’ll prob­a­bly hear some­one talk about an “Amen song.” They don’t mean gospel, not direct­ly, but the famed “Amen break,” a six-sec­ond drum loop sam­pled from a 1969 soul instru­men­tal record­ing of the gospel song “Amen, Broth­er” from the B‑Side of a Gram­my-win­ning record by Wash­ing­ton, DC-based group The Win­stons. Played by drum­mer G.C. Cole­man, who died in 1996, it has like­ly become “the most sam­pled piece of record­ed music ever,” as the Great Big Sto­ry video above points out.

We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured the more exten­sive doc­u­men­tary his­to­ry of the Amen break below by writer Nate Har­ri­son. The Great Big Sto­ry video is not that, but rather a short, 4‑minute tour through the sample’s ori­gins by way of Bronx DJ Lou Flo­res, “Break­beat Lou,” who includ­ed “Amen, Broth­er” on a com­pi­la­tion of songs made specif­i­cal­ly for DJs.

If you’ve nev­er under­stood what’s so cap­ti­vat­ing about this beat, lis­ten to Flo­res describe its son­ic qual­i­ties. It’s “prob­a­bly one of the most organ­ic, larg­er-than-life, big pres­ence style of drums… there’s so many depths to this par­tic­u­lar track,” he says, list­ing the spe­cif­ic effect of each piece of the drum kit.

There real­ly is “noth­ing else like it.” And, para­dox­i­cal­ly, it exists every­where, slowed down as the back­beat of ear­ly hip-hop, sped up to inhu­man speeds in drum ‘n’ bass; appear­ing in some form or anoth­er in the reper­toire of almost every con­tem­po­rary artist, pro­duc­er, and drum­mer. The Amen break has popped up in over 3,000 songs, from David Bowie to Slip­knot to Skrillex to Pub­lic Ene­my to N.W.A. to… well, it may be eas­i­er to name pop­u­lar musi­cians of the last thir­ty years who haven’t been at least Amen-adja­cent at some point in their lives. Like cer­tain stan­dards in jazz or move­ments from clas­si­cal hits, every­one knows it, even if they don’t know they know it.

What’s refresh­ing about the brief explain­er is that, rather than try to cov­er this kind of musi­co­log­i­cal ter­ri­to­ry in a few min­utes, it focus­es on the break’s first pop­u­lar­iz­er, Flo­res, who was drawn out of his retire­ment from music because of the viral phe­nom­e­non of the Amen break. He’s an affa­ble guide to the most famous sam­ple in his­to­ry, hap­py that his cor­ner of the Bronx con­tributed so much to the cul­ture by help­ing turn sam­pled music into an orig­i­nal and inven­tive art form. Learn much more about the his­to­ry of the Amen break in the doc­u­men­tary above and at our pre­vi­ous post here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The “Amen Break”: The Most Famous 6‑Second Drum Loop & How It Spawned a Sam­pling Rev­o­lu­tion

All Hail the Beat: How the 1980 Roland TR-808 Drum Machine Changed Pop Music

A Brief His­to­ry of Sam­pling: From the Bea­t­les to the Beast­ie Boys

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

The Ukrain­ian Band “Brunettes Shoot Blondes” took a bro­ken, vin­tage grand piano and reengi­neered it, turn­ing it into “a hybrid, con­tain­ing 20 instru­ments.” Now, when you press the keys, the “piano ham­mers beat a marim­ba, tam­bourine, cym­bals or even cas­tanets. There are also spe­cial mechan­i­cal devices that allow for the play­ing of cel­lo, vio­lins and organ.” Watch it in action above…

via Colos­sal/Laugh­ing Squid

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the Clavi­chord & Harp­si­chord Became the Mod­ern Piano: The Evo­lu­tion of Key­board Instru­ments, Explained

94-Year-Old Stroke Sur­vivor Plays Jazz Piano for the First Time in Years 

What Does the World’s Old­est Sur­viv­ing Piano Sound Like? Watch Pianist Give a Per­for­mance on a 1720 Cristo­fori Piano

Mark Moth­ers­baugh’s stu­dio is locat­ed in a cylin­dri­cal struc­ture paint­ed bright green — it looks more like a fes­tive auto part than an office build­ing. It’s a fit­ting place for the icon­o­clast musi­cian. For those of you who didn’t spend your child­hoods obses­sive­ly watch­ing the ear­ly years of MTV, Mark Moth­ers­baugh was the mas­ter­mind behind the band Devo. They skew­ered Amer­i­can con­for­mi­ty by dress­ing alike in shiny uni­forms and their music was nervy, twitchy and weird. They taught a nation that if you must whip it, you should whip it good.

In the years since, Moth­ers­baugh has segued into a suc­cess­ful career as a Hol­ly­wood com­pos­er, spin­ning scores for 21 Jump Street and The Roy­al Tenen­baums among oth­ers.

In the video above, you can see Moth­ers­baugh hang out in his stu­dio filled with syn­the­siz­ers of var­i­ous makes and vin­tages, includ­ing Bob Moog’s own per­son­al Mem­o­ry­moog. Watch­ing Moth­ers­baugh pull out and play with each one is a bit like watch­ing a pre­co­cious child talk about his toys. He just has an infec­tious ener­gy that is a lot of fun to watch.

Prob­a­bly the best part in the video is when he shows off a device that can play sounds back­ward. It turns out that if you say, “We smell sausage” back­wards it sounds an awful lot like “Jesus loves you.” Who knew?

Below you can see Moth­ers­baugh in action with Devo, per­form­ing live in Japan dur­ing the band’s hey­day in 1979.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in Feb­ru­ary 2015.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Phi­los­o­phy & Music of Devo, the Avant-Garde Art Project Ded­i­cat­ed to Reveal­ing the Truth About De-Evo­lu­tion

Thomas Dol­by Explains How a Syn­the­siz­er Works on a Jim Hen­son Kids Show (1989)

Watch Her­bie Han­cock Rock Out on an Ear­ly Syn­the­siz­er on Sesame Street (1983)

All Hail the Beat: How the 1980 Roland TR-808 Drum Machine Changed Pop Music

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

Some Amer­i­cans like their pop musi­cians to be more acces­si­ble, less the­atri­cal, and eccentric—and gen­er­al­ly more des­per­ate for the approval of their audi­ence. Kate Bush, thank­ful­ly, has nev­er seemed both­ered by this need. She could leave the spot­light when she need­ed to, or leave the music busi­ness alto­geth­er for a time, and yet remain a cre­ative force to be reck­oned with for four decades now. Her lega­cy has per­me­at­ed con­tem­po­rary music since she appeared in 1978, then retired from the stage the fol­low­ing year after her first tour to focus sole­ly on writ­ing, record­ing, and mak­ing short musi­cal films.

Her debut, The Kick Inside, proved that an orig­i­nal new song­writer worth watch­ing had arrived, and she deliv­ered on the promise in ten stu­dio albums and a career she seemed to sum up in the title of “This Woman’s Work,” from 1989’s The Sen­su­al World. It is work she has always done in her own delight­ful­ly odd, pas­sion­ate, eccen­tri­cal­ly British, the­atri­cal, and deft­ly lit­er­ary way, all qual­i­ties that have made her a mas­sive star in the UK and a hero to artists like Tori Amos, Annie Lennox, Grimes, Flo­rence and the Machine, and too many more to name.

Bush’s unusu­al traits also make her a per­fect artist to pay trib­ute to in an orches­tral set­ting, as Sweden’s Gothen­burg Sym­pho­ny has done in the 2018 con­cert also titled “This Woman’s Work” and fea­tur­ing the very-Bush-wor­thy vocal tal­ents of guest singers Jen­nie Abra­ham­son and Malin Dahlström. It’s “a tow­er­ing trib­ute,” the Sym­pho­ny writes, “with hit songs and pure poet­ry in spe­cial arrange­ments by Mar­tin Schaub.” And it arrived to mark a spe­cial moment indeed: the 40th anniver­sary of the release of Bush’s bril­liant­ly strange debut sin­gle “Wuther­ing Heights.” See the full per­for­mance at the top of the post and excerpt­ed songs through­out, includ­ing Abra­ham­son’s cov­er of “This Wom­an’s Work,” above.

Appear­ing in the ghost­ly guise and ethe­re­al­ly high-pitched voice of Cathy Earn­shaw, doomed hero­ine of Emi­ly Brontë’s nov­el, Bush cap­ti­vat­ed mil­lions in two videos that are now absolute clas­sics. She drew on the mime the­atrics of her teacher Lind­say Kemp, who pre­vi­ous­ly men­tored David Bowie, and gave us the indeli­ble image of a woman pos­sessed by weird imag­i­na­tion, uncan­ny musi­cal tal­ent, and some fright­en­ing dance moves. The images and sounds she cre­at­ed in just those 3 and a half min­utes are icon­ic. Or, putting it a lit­tle dif­fer­ent­ly in a short BBC doc­u­men­tary, John Lydon says, “Kate Bush and her grand piano… that’s like John Wayne and his sad­dle… her shrieks and war­bles are beau­ty beyond belief.”

If you came to Bush lat­er in her career, say dur­ing 1985’s huge Hounds of Love, and some­how missed her unbe­liev­able first fine art-rock per­for­mances on film, watch both the white and red dress ver­sions first, then watch the Gothen­burg Symphony’s glow­ing, career-span­ning trib­ute to a woman who “laid the ground­work for [a] gen­er­a­tion of per­form­ers,” as Marc Hirsh writes at NPR. Even though he is an Amer­i­can who does not care for Kate Bush, Hirsh can’t seem to help enu­mer­at­ing the very rea­sons she is so spe­cial to so many, and he fea­tures a num­ber of her videos that demon­strate why she’s an artist her fans love “from the very core of their being.”

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

2009 Kate Bush Doc­u­men­tary Dubs Her “Queen of British Pop”

Kate Bush’s First Ever Tele­vi­sion Appear­ance, Per­form­ing “Kite” & “Wuther­ing Heights” on Ger­man TV (1978)

The Largest Ever Trib­ute to Kate Bush’s “Wuther­ing Heights” Chore­o­graphed by a Flash­mob in Berlin

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

As far as I’m con­cerned, debate over whether or not Ringo Starr is a good drum­mer is over, done with, set­tled. How is it pos­si­ble that some of the great­est record­ed music of the 20th cen­tu­ry, with some of the most dis­tinc­tive rhythms, fills, and drum breaks in pop music, could have come from a mediocre musi­cian? The stan­dard response has been to allege that Starr’s best parts were played by some­one else. In a hand­ful of recordings—though I won’t argue over which ones—it seems he might have been replaced, for what­ev­er rea­son. But Ringo could do more than hold his own. He was some­thing rar­er and more valu­able than any stu­dio musi­cian. He remains one of the most dis­tinc­tive­ly musi­cal drum­mers on record.

What does that mean? It means he intu­it­ed exact­ly what a song need­ed, and what it didn’t. He used what Bud­dy Rich called his “ade­quate” abil­i­ties (a com­pli­ment, I’d say, com­ing from Bud­dy Rich) to serve the songs best, find­ing ways to enhance the struc­tures and arrange­ments with drum parts that are as unique­ly mem­o­rable as the melodies and har­monies.

His humil­i­ty and sense of humor come through in his taste­ful, yet dynam­ic play­ing. I say this as a seri­ous Ringo fan, but if you, or some­one you know, needs con­vinc­ing, don’t take my word for it. Take it from skilled drum­mers Sina and Bran­don Khoo.

What are Sina’s cre­den­tials for mak­ing a pro-Ringo case? Well, for one thing, her father played in Germany’s biggest Bea­t­les trib­ute band, the Sil­ver Bea­t­les. Also, she’s a very good musi­cian who has mem­o­rized Ringo’s reper­toire and can explain it well. Above, she demon­strates how his uncom­pli­cat­ed grooves com­ple­ment the songs, so much so they have become icon­ic in their own right. (To skirt copy­right issues, Sina plays along to con­vinc­ing cov­ers by her dad’s band.)

Ringo’s drum pat­tern for “In My Life,” for exam­ple, she says “is absolute­ly unique, nobody ever played this before. It’s tru­ly orig­i­nal and the song won’t work with any oth­er drum part.” If you were to write a new song around the drums alone, it would prob­a­bly come out sound­ing just like “In My Life.” As Har­ri­son remarks at the top, “he’s very good because he’ll lis­ten to the song once, and he knows exact­ly what to play.”

Vir­tu­oso drum­mer Bran­don Khoo makes the case for Ringo as a good drum­mer, above, after a brief defense of much-maligned White Stripes drum­mer Meg White. He, too, choos­es “In My Life” to show how “Ringo lays it down” with max­i­mum feel and effi­cien­cy, deft­ly but sub­tly chang­ing things up in near­ly every phrase of the song. Conversely—in an exag­ger­at­ed counterexample—Koo shows what a tech­ni­cal­ly-skilled, but unmu­si­cal, drum­mer might do, name­ly tram­ple over the del­i­cate gui­tars and vocals with an aggres­sive attack and dis­tract­ing, unnec­es­sary fills and cym­bal crash­es. “A good drum­mer is a drum­mer who knows how to play, num­ber one, for the music.”

If these clear demon­stra­tions fail to sway, maybe some celebri­ty endorse­ments will do. Just above, in a video made by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to cel­e­brate an exhib­it of Ringo’s famous drum kit, see Dave Grohl, Tay­lor Hawkins, Stew­art Copeland, Quest­love, Tre Cool, Max Wein­berg, Chad Smith, and more pay trib­ute. Grohl describes him as the “king of feel,” Smith talks about his “knack for com­ing up with real­ly inter­est­ing musi­cal parts that became rhyth­mic hooks.” In the span of just three min­utes, we get a sense of exact­ly why the most famous drum­mers in rock and roll admire Ringo.

Mil­lions of drum­mers have come and gone since The Bea­t­les’ day, most of them influ­enced by Ringo, as Wein­berg says. And not one of them has ever played like Ringo Starr. “You hear his drum­ming,” says Grohl, “and you know exact­ly who it is.” Hear how his style evolved right along with the band’s song­writ­ing in Kye Smith’s chrono­log­i­cal drum med­ley of Bea­t­les hits below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Musi­cian Plays Sig­na­ture Drum Parts of 71 Bea­t­les Songs in 5 Min­utes: A Whirl­wind Trib­ute to Ringo Starr

How Can You Tell a Good Drum­mer from a Bad Drum­mer?: Ringo Starr as Case Study

Iso­lat­ed Drum Tracks From Six of Rock’s Great­est: Bon­ham, Moon, Peart, Copeland, Grohl & Starr

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