When Led Zep­pelin appeared in late 1968, they already had the mak­ings of a super­group, so to speak, though only found­ing mem­ber Jim­my Page was a famous rock star. Four equal­ly tal­ent­ed and sea­soned musi­cians, each inte­gral to the band’s sound. But it might have been oth­er­wise. Page first intend­ed to cre­ate a lit­er­al super­group, join­ing his fel­low for­mer Yard­bird Jeff Beck and The Who’s Kei­th Moon and John Entwistle.

Who knows what might have come of it? Moon sup­pos­ed­ly quipped that it would go down like a lead bal­loon, inspir­ing the name of the band that was to come. This his­to­ry makes all the more poignant the fact that Moon’s last onstage per­for­mance before his death was with Led Zep­pelin.

Moon joined the band dur­ing the L.A. stop of their 1977 tour to ram­ble drunk­en­ly into the micro­phone and sit in on a drum and tam­bourine with John Bon­ham dur­ing a near­ly 20-minute drum solo on “Moby Dick.”

Moon also joined the band dur­ing the two-song encore of “Whole Lot­ta Love” and “Rock & Roll.” See parts of those per­for­mances at the top in audi­ence footage. His brief moments behind John Bonham’s drums can­not be con­sid­ered rep­re­sen­ta­tive of what a hypo­thet­i­cal Kei­th Moon-backed Led Zep­pelin might sound like. Not only was he play­ing anoth­er drummer’s kit—a sig­nif­i­cant hand­i­cap for Moon—but also, the Kei­th Moon of 1977 was not the Kei­th Moon of 1968. These doc­u­ments of rock his­to­ry can’t tell us what might have been, only, for a brief moment, what was.

Moon has been regard­ed as one of the great­est drum­mers in rock for his huge musi­cal per­son­al­i­ty. “No drum­mer in a true rock & roll band has ever been given—has ever seized, perhaps—so much space and pres­ence,” wrote Greil Mar­cus in trib­ute when Moon died the year after his Led Zep­pelin cameo. Moon, “as Jon Lan­dau point­ed out years ago… played the parts con­ven­tion­al­ly giv­en over to the lead gui­tar.” Moon called him­self, with typ­i­cal sar­casm, “the best Kei­th Moon-type drum­mer,” an insight into just how sin­gu­lar his play­ing was. His total lack of restraint fit The Who per­fect­ly.

But his­to­ry would decree that Bon­ham become the ide­al Led Zep­pelin-type drum­mer. He played lead parts as well, but nev­er at the expense of rhythm. The pit­fall of a supergroup—or a group of equal­ly superb musicians—is that every­one can tend to over­play. Bon­ham was a superb musi­cian, but also a drum­mer who knew exact­ly how to accom­mo­date oth­ers’ virtuosity—building spa­cious rhyth­mic struc­tures that held togeth­er the bom­bast of Plant and Page in a coher­ent whole. Bon­ham could fol­low Page’s riffs just as often as he could deploy his own thun­der­ing hooks.

Kei­th Moon was at his best play­ing Kei­th Moon, sound­ing “as if he came out of nowhere to take over the world,” wrote Mar­cus. The Who’s “best sin­gles and album tracks not only fea­tured Moon, they were built around him,” Entwistle and Town­shend pro­vid­ing struc­ture while Moon sup­plied the fiery core. Hear him at his incan­des­cent best in the iso­lat­ed drum track for “Wont’ Get Fooled Again” above and read more about what made him so indeli­bly unique in Mar­cus’ eulo­gy for “the best drum­mer in the his­to­ry of rock ‘n roll.” Lis­ten to a full audi­ence audio record­ing of that 1977 con­cert just below.

via Jam­Base

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Watch/Hear Led Zeppelin’s Ear­li­est Per­for­mances from 1968–69 & Cel­e­brate the 50th Anniver­sary of the Band’s Birth

What Makes John Bon­ham Such a Good Drum­mer? A New Video Essay Breaks Down His Inim­itable Style

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

Harp gui­tars have been around since at least the 19th cen­tu­ry, and if you want a good, enthu­si­as­tic, intel­lec­tu­al argu­ment on the exact date of its birth, you’ll find many an orga­nol­o­gist ready to do that. (Here’s a page filled with infor­ma­tion about the sub­ject.) But it was only recent­ly, in 2014, that the Grove Dic­tio­nary of Musi­cal Instru­ments final­ly rec­og­nized the harp gui­tar as its own thing. New- or old-fan­gled as it might be, the harp gui­tar con­tains both the usu­al six strings and fret­ted neck and a neigh­bor­ing series of unstopped open strings. Well known musi­cians who have played them include John McLaugh­lin, David Lind­ley, and Rob­bie Robert­son.

But look up the instru­ment on the ‘net and there’s one name that will pop up before any­body else: 29 year old Cana­di­an Jamie Dupuis. He’s earned mil­lions of views on his YouTube chan­nel for arrang­ing and per­form­ing cov­ers of rock and met­al clas­sics.

He’s cer­tain­ly a fan of Pink Floyd, as you can see above in his cov­er of “Com­fort­ably Numb.” The ring­ing, echo­ing qual­i­ty of the harp guitar’s body suit the song well, as it starts to resem­ble a sort of synth-string wash.

The acoustic-based Floyd songs work as well as you might expect. “Wish You Were Here” for exam­ple.
Dupuis shows his skill with the more exper­i­men­tal elec­tron­ics of Dark Side of the Moon. He adds a slide gui­tar and effects to “Time”:

…which works even bet­ter on “Breathe”:

And he brings out the very strange look­ing Dyer Elec­tric Gui­tar Harp for “Wel­come to the Machine,” using some dou­ble-track­ing to give him some solo­ing space.

You can hear all his Floyd cov­ers as a playlist here, and then check out his oth­er Harp Gui­tar cov­ers from Ozzy Osbourne to Tears for Fears here as well as some clas­si­cal arrange­ments.

Oh and yes, he also plays reg­u­lar ol’ acoustic gui­tar and some ban­jo. The man cer­tain­ly knows his way around a fret: enjoy!

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Pink Floyd’s “Great Gig in the Sky” Played on the Theremin

Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” Mov­ing­ly Per­formed by the Six-String Sol­diers, of The Unit­ed States Army Field Band

Dire Straits’ “Sul­tans Of Swing” Played on the Gayageum, a Kore­an Instru­ment Dat­ing Back to the 6th Cen­tu­ry

A One-Man Pink Floyd Band Cre­ates Note-Per­fect Cov­ers of “Echoes,” “Com­fort­ably Numb,” “Moth­er” & Oth­er Clas­sics: Watch 19-Year-Old Wun­derkind Ewan Cun­ning­ham in Action

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

What if every­thing you thought you knew about grunge was a lie? Maybe you’ve sus­pect­ed all along! But even if you were there, or some­where, in that time of abysmal­ly low inter­net lit­er­a­cy and con­nec­tiv­i­ty, when every tra­di­tion­al media out­let was flan­nel, flop­py hair, mopey half-protests, fes­ti­vals, Seat­tle.… When you could save $6-$13 on “women’s grunge” and “$5 on kids’ grunge too!” at major depart­ment store chains…

But we may still remem­ber grunge as a movement—with charis­mat­ic lead­ers and trag­ic heroes. A move­ment to reclaim seri­ous, heavy, emo­tion­al hair rock from the pro­found­ly unse­ri­ous hair bands of the 80s. The first wave of Pacif­ic North­west bands to emerge with Nir­vana, Soundgar­den, and Pearl Jam were earnest and well-mean­ing and “pri­mal,” says Bruce Pavitt, co-founder of the leg­endary Seat­tle record label Sub Pop.

Sub Pop mid­wifed the scene by sign­ing so many of the bands that made it big, cul­ti­vat­ing the sound and look of dirty, angry back­woods­men with gui­tars. “Grunge Made Blue-Col­lar Cul­ture Cool,” wrote Steven Kurutz in The New York Times Style Sec­tion just a few days ago, an implic­it acknowl­edg­ment that the most­ly-white and large­ly male scene sold a par­tic­u­lar image of blue-col­lar that res­onat­ed, says Pavitt, because it rep­re­sent­ed an “ ‘Amer­i­can arche­type.”

Pavitt and co-founder Jonathan Pone­man were diehard fans of the music but they were no star­ry-eyed idealists—they under­stood exact­ly how to sell the region’s quirks to a nation­al and inter­na­tion­al media. “It could have hap­pened any­where,” Pone­man has said, “but there was a lucky set of coin­ci­dences. [Pho­tog­ra­ph­er] Charles Peter­son was here to doc­u­ment the scene, [pro­duc­er] Jack Endi­no was here to record the scene. Bruce and I were here to exploit the scene.”

But what was the scene? Was it “Grunge”? What is “Grunge”? How do you pro­nounce “Grunge”? What do “Grunge” peo­ple eat? After being pep­pered with one too many ques­tions when the shock­wave of Nirvana’s major label debut Nev­er­mind hit in 1992, Pone­man referred a reporter to a for­mer Sub Pop employ­ee, Megan Jasper, then work­ing as a sales rep for Car­o­line records. The reporter, Rick Marin, was call­ing from The New York Times’ Style Sec­tion, ask­ing for help com­pil­ing a grunge lex­i­con. What kinds of things do “Grunge” peo­ple say?

“By then,” writes Alan Siegel at The Ringer, “only out­siders earnest­ly used the term ‘grunge’ as a noun.” It was, says Charles Cross, for­mer edi­tor of alter­na­tive paper The Rock­et, “an over­hyped, inflat­ed word that doesn’t have actu­al mean­ing in Seat­tle.” As for grunge slang, such a thing “didn’t exist.” The only thing to do, Jasper decid­ed, was “react by try­ing to make fun of it,” she says. She had done the very same thing months ear­li­er, when British mag­a­zine Sky made the same request. “I gave them a bunch of fake shit.”

As she says in the inter­view clip at the top, she asked Marin to toss out nor­mal words and she would give him “grunge” equiv­a­lents. “I kept esca­lat­ing the crazi­ness of the trans­la­tions because any­one in their right mind would go, ‘Oh, come on, this is bull­shit.’… but it nev­er  hap­pened because he was con­cen­trat­ing so hard on get­ting the infor­ma­tion right.” Thus, the grunge lex­i­con below, pub­lished in The New York Times in 1992. (“All sub­cul­tures speak in code,” goes the cap­tion. This one would be appear­ing in malls nation­wide.)

• bloat­ed, big bag of bloata­tion – drunk
• bound-and-hagged – stay­ing home on Fri­day or Sat­ur­day night
• cob nob­bler – los­er
• dish – desir­able guy
• fuzz – heavy wool sweaters
• harsh realm – bum­mer
• kick­ers – heavy boots
• lames­tain – uncool per­son
• plats – plat­form shoes
• rock on – a hap­py good­bye
• score – great
• swingin’ on the flip­pi­ty-flop – hang­ing out
• tom-tom club – uncool out­siders
• wack slacks – old ripped jeans

It’s unlike­ly Marin ever trav­eled to Seat­tle and tried to bond with fel­low kids, or he would not have pub­lished Jasper’s hoax glos­sary in an arti­cle oth­er­wise crit­i­cal of the main­stream­ing of grunge. Marin com­pared the phe­nom­e­non to “the mass-mar­ket­ing of dis­co, punk and hip-hop. Now with the grung­ing of Amer­i­ca, it’s hap­pen­ing again. Pop will eat itself, the axiom goes.” It’s a thor­ough, well-sourced piece that quotes many of the scene’s founders, includ­ing Pone­man, nev­er sus­pect­ing they might be hav­ing a laugh.

The fake news grunge lex­i­con was a huge hit in Seat­tle, where Jasper was cel­e­brat­ed by her friends and fam­i­ly. “I got a very nice pat on the back,” she says. Peo­ple clipped the lex­i­con to their shirts at shows. Indie label C/Z records then print­ed t‑shirts. “Lames­tain” appeared on one. “Harsh Realm” on anoth­er. Mud­honey spread around Jasper’s slang in a Melody Mak­er inter­view with straight faces. It should have been debunked imme­di­ate­ly “but this was 1992,” writes Siegel, “Snopes wasn’t around yet. Hell, The New York Times was still four years away from launch­ing a web­site.”

Then, writer and reporter Thomas Frank called Jasper and asked, “there’s no way this is real, right?” Imme­di­ate­ly, she respond­ed, “Of course it’s not real.” Frank pub­lished the scoop in 1993; the Times smeared him as a hoax­er to dis­cred­it the rev­e­la­tion. The Baf­fler faxed the Times this note: “When The News­pa­per of Record goes search­ing for the Next Big Thing and the Next Big Thing pid­dles on its leg, we think that’s fun­ny.” These days, we might expect a Twit­ter war.

No one Siegel inter­views seems to have been par­tic­u­lar­ly upset about the whole thing. Marin’s “eye­brow is total­ly raised” through­out his piece, says his for­mer edi­tor Pene­lope Green. (Marin him­self declined to be inter­viewed.) But the sto­ry has far less to do with one cred­u­lous reporter work­ing a dead­line and more to do with his argument—grunge had been rapid­ly pack­aged and sold, and by The Times, no less! But maybe its image was sort of a joke to begin with, one that now gets such straight-faced, rev­er­ent, sealed-behind-glass-cas­es treat­ment that you have to laugh.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Nirvana’s Icon­ic “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” Came to Be: An Ani­mat­ed Video Nar­rat­ed by T‑Bone Bur­nett Tells the True Sto­ry

The Pow­er of Eddie Vedder’s Voice: Hear Iso­lat­ed Vocal Tracks from Three Clas­sic Pearl Jam Songs

A Mas­sive 800-Track Playlist of 90s Indie & Alter­na­tive Music, in Chrono­log­i­cal Order

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