Remembering American Songwriting Legend John Prine (RIP): “A True Folk Singer in the Best Folk Tradition”

“A friend called our new world ‘a ghost ship,’” wrote Nick Cave in a recent install­ment of his Red Hand Files blog. “She has recent­ly lost some­one dear to her and rec­og­nizes acute­ly the pre­mon­i­to­ry feel­ing of a world about to be shat­tered.” The expe­ri­ence has become dis­tress­ing­ly com­mon. We have all begun to lose peo­ple dear, if not near, to us—artists tak­en by the dis­ease before their time like Bill With­ers, whose “Lean on Me” is now more poignant than ever. What­ev­er else we’re faced with as the glob­al epi­dem­ic pro­gress­es, we are enter­ing a peri­od of deep mourn­ing that Cave encour­ages his fans to treat with seri­ous respect.

To the list of those we mourn, we now must add leg­endary singer and song­writer John Prine, who died from COVID-19 com­pli­ca­tions yes­ter­day. Prine was an artist who didn’t so much achieve fame as an almost indis­pens­able pres­ence in Amer­i­can cul­ture that runs much deep­er and will last longer. He wrote songs so good, Kris Kristof­fer­son once joked “we’ll have to break his thumbs.” (Kristof­fer­son dis­cov­ered him play­ing in the Chica­go folk scene in 1971. Their meet­ing was, said Prine in 2019, “a Cin­derel­la sto­ry.”) Prine could count him­self among Bob Dylan’s favorite song­writ­ers, and was some­times called “the next Dylan.” (In his Twit­ter trib­ute, Bruce Spring­steen writes, “John and I were ‘New Dylans’ togeth­er in the ear­ly 70s.)

Prine wrote with more folksy good humor than Dylan, how­ev­er, a much cheerier the­o­log­i­cal bent, and with more con­cern for telling sto­ries with straight­for­ward emo­tion­al impact, with­out veer­ing into sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty. But like Dylan, every song­writer in folk, blue­grass, and coun­try has paid homage to him as a muse and cov­ered his songs. Bon­nie Raitt made his “Angel in Mont­gomery” famous and called him “a true folk singer in the best folk tra­di­tion, cut­ting right to the heart of things, as pure and sim­ple as rain.”

As has many great folk singers, Prine paid ample trib­ute to his fore­bears: A.P. Carter, Hank Williams, “Cow­boy” Jack Clement, Tex Rit­ter.… build­ing a bridge between them and con­tem­po­rary song­writ­ers like the Avett Broth­ers, Bon Iver, Justin Townes Ear­le, and Jason Isbell, who have all cov­ered Prine songs. (See him with Sturgill Simp­son at the top.) He was indie before indie—breaking from the major labels in 1981 and estab­lish­ing his own label, Oh Boy Records. And he was gen­uine­ly “Amer­i­cana” in that he wrote of rur­al work­ing-class issues in a work­ing-class voice, inspired to pen his first major song “Par­adise” by the destruc­tion strip min­ing wrought upon his father’s Ken­tucky home­town.

“Par­adise” plays out like a John Sayles film, with local Green Riv­er ref­er­ences and images of shoot­ing pis­tols at snakes and pop bot­tles at “the aban­doned old prison down by Air­drie Hill.” The song’s third verse depicts the mind­less vio­lence of strip min­ing: “they tor­tured the tim­ber and stripped all the land,” he sings, “then they wrote it all down as the progress of man.” It was the first song he record­ed for his self-titled 1971 debut and estab­lished a long tra­di­tion of protest music both wist­ful and wit­ty, like the peren­ni­al­ly rel­e­vant “Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heav­en Any­more,” which tells flag-wav­ing chau­vin­ists, “They’re already over­crowd­ed from your dirty lit­tle war.” He tells the sto­ry of writ­ing the song all the way back in 1968 in the live per­for­mance from 2010’s In Per­son & On Stage below.

Prine also wrote from the per­spec­tive of a vet­er­an (he served in the army in the 60s), whose coun­try had let him down in the Viet­nam deba­cle and sub­se­quent bloody mis­ad­ven­tures. In “The Great Com­pro­mise,” he used the alle­go­ry of a jilt­ed lover to express great dis­il­lu­sion­ment.

Many times I’d fought to pro­tect her
But this time she was goin’ too far
Now some folks they call me a cow­ard
Cause I left her at the dri­ve-in that night
But I’d druther have names thrown at me
Than to fight for a thing that ain’t right

I used to sleep at the foot of Old Glo­ry
And awake in the dawn’s ear­ly light
But much to my sur­prise
When I opened my eyes
I was a vic­tim of the great com­pro­mise

The song’s title and refrain ref­er­ence the 1787 Con­sti­tu­tion­al Con­ven­tion, sug­gest­ing that part of his awak­en­ing to the country’s flaws includes a recog­ni­tion that they had been built in from the start. “Sam Stone,” his por­trait of a Viet­nam vet dying slow from hero­in addic­tion, a song once cov­ered by John­ny Cash, per­fects the direct­ness and sim­ple lyri­cism of coun­try bal­lads to dev­as­tat­ing effect: “There’s a hole in daddy’s arm where all the mon­ey goes/Jesus Christ died for noth­in I sup­pose.”

Songs like “Sam Smith” and “Par­adise” grab hold with images and obser­va­tions that crys­tal­ize the kind of down-and-out Amer­i­can suf­fer­ing that fea­tures all the time in best­selling non­fic­tion books and long­form arti­cles, but nev­er gets addressed in any mean­ing­ful way. But Prine could also light­en up—a lot—with com­ic-roman­tic gems like “In Spite of Our­selves,” writ­ten for a film in which he starred as Bil­ly Bob Thornton’s broth­er. He record­ed the song as a duet with Iris DeMent, the title track for an album of cov­ers with oth­er famous women coun­try singers like Emmy­lou Har­ris, Lucin­da Williams, and Pat­ty Love­less.

Full of pro­fane, down­home humor (“he’s got more balls than a big brass mon­key”), the tune is rep­re­sen­ta­tive of one of Prine’s many song­writ­ing per­son­ae in a career impos­si­ble to sum up in a neat and tidy way. Suf­fice it to say that Prine’s death from COVID-19 at age 73—after his many decades cel­e­brat­ing and lament­ing the strug­gles of ordi­nary peo­ple and lam­bast­ing the greed and bel­liger­ence of the U.S. gov­ern­ment and corporations—underlines the plain truths of his songs with trag­ic irony. Prine sur­vived can­cer surgery in 1998 and the removal of a lung in 2013, yet he con­tin­ued to per­form into his final years, releas­ing a fol­low-up to In Spite of Our­selves in 2016 and his final album, The Tree of For­give­ness, in 2018, a “trunk­ful of supreme­ly gen­er­ous Amer­i­can music,” wrote Ian Crouch in a New York­er review. See his NPR Tiny Desk per­for­mance from 2018 below.

Anoth­er writer who had seen and doc­u­ment­ed what Prine had over the years might have grown bit­ter. But we can mourn his death know­ing that he seems to have had lit­tle unfin­ished busi­ness with his god or his fel­low human beings. “When I get to heav­en,” he speak-sings in the intro to one of his final record­ings, “I’m gonna shake God’s hand/Thank him for more bless­ings than one man can stand/Then I’m gonna get a guitar/And start a rock ‘n’ roll band/Check into a swell hotel/Ain’t the after­life grand?” We can hope, at least, if we’re so inclined, that it’s at least a kinder place than the world Prine left behind. And we can be grate­ful he left a lega­cy of time­less music that always seems to speak to the sad­ness, dis­ap­point­ment, anger, and raw, in-spite-of-it-all tragi­com­e­dy of the Amer­i­can predica­ment.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bill Mur­ray Explains How He Was Saved by John Prine      

Tom Pet­ty Takes You Inside His Song­writ­ing Craft

Bob Dylan Releas­es a Cryp­tic 17-Minute Song about the JFK Assas­si­na­tion: Hear a “Mur­der Most Foul”

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

Bill Murray Explains How He Was Saved by John Prine

Judg­ing by the out­pour­ing of affec­tion in online com­ment sec­tions, Chica­go folk musi­cian John Prine (may he rest in peace) has helped a great many of his fans through tough times with his human­ist, oft-humor­ous lyrics.

Add fun­ny man Bill Mur­ray to the list.

Tap­ing a video in sup­port of The Tree of For­give­ness, Prine’s first album of new mate­r­i­al in over a decade, Mur­ray recalled a grim peri­od in which a deep funk robbed him of all enjoy­ment. Though he care­ful­ly stip­u­lates that this “bum­mer” could not be diag­nosed as clin­i­cal depres­sion, noth­ing lift­ed his spir­its, until Gonzo jour­nal­ist Dr. Hunter S. Thomp­son—whom Mur­ray embod­ied in the 1980 film, Where the Buf­fa­lo Roam—sug­gest­ed that he turn to Prine for his sense of humor.

Mur­ray took Thompson’s advice, and gave his fel­low Illi­nois­ian’s dou­ble great­est hits album, Great Days, a lis­ten.

This could have back­fired, giv­en that Great Days con­tains some of Prine’s most melancholy—and memorable—songs, from “Hel­lo in There” and “Angel from Mont­gomery” to “Sam Stone,” vot­ed the 8th sad­dest song of all time in a Rolling Stone read­ers’ poll.

But the song that left the deep­est impres­sion on Mur­ray is a sil­ly coun­try-swing num­ber “Lin­da Goes to Mars,” in which a clue­less hus­band assumes his wife’s vacant expres­sion is proof of inter­plan­e­tary trav­el rather than dis­in­ter­est.

To hear Mur­ray tell it, as he thumbs through a copy of John Prine Beyond Words, the moment was not one of gut-bust­ing hilar­i­ty, but rather one of self-aware­ness and relief, a sig­nal that the dark clouds that had been hang­ing over him would dis­perse.

A grate­ful Murray’s admi­ra­tion runs deep. As he told The Wash­ing­ton Post, when he was award­ed the Kennedy Cen­ter Mark Twain Prize for Amer­i­can Humor, he lobbied—unsuccessfully—to get Prine flown in for the cer­e­mo­ny:

I thought it would have been a nice deal because John Prine can make you laugh like no else can make you laugh.

Dit­to Prine’s dear friend, the late, great folk musi­cian, Steve Good­man, the author of “The Veg­etable Song,” “The Lin­coln Park Pirates” (about a leg­endary Chica­go tow­ing com­pa­ny), and “Go, Cubs, Go,” which Mur­ray trilled on Sat­ur­day Night Live with play­ers Dex­ter Fowler, Antho­ny Riz­zo, and David Ross short­ly before the Cub­bies won the 2016 World Series.

I just found out yes­ter­day that Lin­da goes to Mars

Every time I sit and look at pic­tures of used cars

She’ll turn on her radio and sit down in her chair

And look at me across the room as if I was­n’t there

Oh, my stars, my Lin­da’s gone to Mars

Well, I wish she would­n’t leave me here alone

Oh, my stars, my Lin­da’s gone to Mars

Well, I won­der if she’d bring me some­thing home

Some­thing, some­where, some­how took my Lin­da by the hand

And secret­ly decod­ed our sacred wed­ding band

For when the moon shines down upon our hap­py hum­ble home

Her inner space gets tor­tured by some out­er space unknown

Oh, my stars, my Lin­da’s gone to Mars

Well, I wish she would­n’t leave me here alone

Oh, my stars, my Lin­da’s gone to Mars

Well, I won­der if she’d bring me some­thing home

Now I ain’t seen no saucers ‘cept the ones upon the shelf

And if I ever seen one I’d keep it to myself

For if there’s life out there some­where beyond this life on earth

Then Lin­da must have gone out there and got her mon­ey’s worth

Oh, my stars, my Lin­da’s gone to Mars

Well, I wish she would­n’t leave me here alone

Oh, my stars, my Lin­da’s gone to Mars

Well, I won­der if she’d bring me some­thing home

Yeah, I won­der if she’d bring me some­thing home

Lis­ten to a Great Days Spo­ti­fy playlist here, though nei­ther Open Cul­ture, nor Bill Mur­ray can be held account­able if you find your­self blink­ing back tears.

Bonus: Below, watch Prine and Mur­ray “swap songs and sto­ries about the ear­ly days in Chica­go cross­ing paths with the likes of John Belushi, Steve Good­man and Kris Kristof­fer­son.” Plus more.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in June 2018.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Phi­los­o­phy of Bill Mur­ray: The Intel­lec­tu­al Foun­da­tions of His Comedic Per­sona

Bill Mur­ray Reads the Poet­ry of Lawrence Fer­linghet­ti, Wal­lace Stevens, Emi­ly Dick­in­son, Bil­ly Collins, Lorine Niedeck­er, Lucille Clifton & More

Lis­ten to Bill Mur­ray Lead a Guid­ed Medi­a­tion on How It Feels to Be Bill Mur­ray

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Thurs­day June 28 for anoth­er month­ly install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Classic Songs Re-Imagined as Vintage Book Covers During Our Troubled Times: “Under Pressure,” “It’s the End of the World as We Know It,” “Shelter from the Storm” & More

Even before the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, how many of us sought solace from the tur­bu­lent 21st cen­tu­ry in cul­tur­al arti­facts of bygone eras? Our favorite records by the likes of the Bea­t­les, Queen, David Bowie; our favorite nov­els by the likes of Ray­mond Chan­dler, Ian Flem­ing, Philip K. Dick: all of them now pos­sess a solid­i­ty that seems lack­ing in much cur­rent pop­u­lar cul­ture. The work of all these cre­ators has its own kind of artis­tic dar­ing, and all of it, too, also came out of times trou­bled in their own way.

Hence the cul­tur­al res­o­nance that has long out­last­ed their first burst of pop­u­lar­i­ty — and that fuels the visu­al mash-ups of Todd Alcott. A pro­fes­sion­al screen­writer and graph­ic design­er, Alcott takes mid-20th-cen­tu­ry works of graph­ic design, most often paper­back book cov­ers, and reimag­ines them with the lyrics, themes, and even imagery of pop­u­lar songs from a slight­ly lat­er peri­od. This project is eas­i­er shown than explained, but take a glance at his Etsy shop and you’ll under­stand it at once.

You’ll also take notice of a few mash-ups espe­cial­ly rel­e­vant to the present moment, one in which we all feel a bit “Under Pres­sure.” The whole of “Plan­et Earth,” after all, has found itself sub­ject to the kind of dead­ly pan­dem­ic that only hap­pens “Once in a Life­time,” if that often.

Increas­ing­ly many of us feel the need to “Call the Doc­tor,” but increas­ing­ly often, the doc­tor has proven unavail­able. Most of us can do no bet­ter than seek­ing “Shel­ter from the Storm” — and some of us have been forced by law to do so.

In some coun­tries, all this has begun to feel like “Life Dur­ing Wartime.” Extend­ed peri­ods con­fined to our homes have ren­dered some of us “Com­fort­ably Numb,” and no few Amer­i­cans have begun to say, “I’m So Bored with the U.S.A.” Per­haps you’ve even heard from friends who describes them­selves as in the process of “Los­ing My Reli­gion.” Some see human­i­ty as plung­ing into “The Down­ward Spi­ral” that ulti­mate­ly means “It’s the End of the World as We Know It.”

Oth­ers say “Don’t Wor­ry About the Gov­ern­ment,” expect­ing as they do a “Rev­o­lu­tion” for which they’ve already begun to arm them­selves with “Lawyers, Guns and Mon­ey.” But how many of us can real­ly say with con­fi­dence what a post-coro­n­avirus world will look like, and how or whether it will be dif­fer­ent from the one we’ve grown used to? Best to draw all we can from the wis­dom of the past — what­ev­er form it comes in — and bear in mind that, as a 20th-cen­tu­ry sage once put it, “Tomor­row Nev­er Knows.” You can pur­chase copies of Todd Alcot­t’s cov­ers (which extends well beyond what appears here) at his Etsy shop.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bea­t­les Songs Re-Imag­ined as Vin­tage Book Cov­ers and Mag­a­zine Pages: “Dri­ve My Car,” “Lucy in the Sky with Dia­monds” & More

Clas­sic Songs by Bob Dylan Re-Imag­ined as Pulp Fic­tion Book Cov­ers: “Like a Rolling Stone,” “A Hard Rain’s A‑Gonna Fall” & More

David Bowie Songs Reimag­ined as Pulp Fic­tion Book Cov­ers: Space Odd­i­ty, Heroes, Life on Mars & More

Talk­ing Heads Songs Become Mid­cen­tu­ry Pulp Nov­els, Mag­a­zines & Adver­tise­ments: “Burn­ing Down the House,” “Once in a Life­time,” and More

Clas­sic Radio­head Songs Re-Imag­ined as a Sci-Fi Book, Pulp Fic­tion Mag­a­zine & Oth­er Nos­tal­gic Arti­facts

Songs by Joni Mitchell Re-Imag­ined as Pulp Fic­tion Book Cov­ers & Vin­tage Movie Posters

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

“It’s the End of the World as We Know It,” Michael Stipe Proclaims Again, and He Still Feels Fine

It has tak­en a viral pan­dem­ic, and a moun­tain of trag­ic fol­ly and more to come, but the inter­net has final­ly deliv­ered the qual­i­ty con­tent we deserve, at least when it comes to celebri­ties stuck at home. Night­ly bed­time sto­ries read by Dol­ly Par­ton? Inti­mate streamed per­for­mances from Neil Young, Ben Gib­bard, and many, many oth­ers, includ­ing stars of Broad­way and opera house stages? It can feel a lit­tle over­whelm­ing, espe­cial­ly for peo­ple work­ing, edu­cat­ing, and doing a hun­dred oth­er things in quar­an­tine. But if there’s some­one I real­ly want to hear from, it’s the guy who told us, thir­ty-some years ago, “It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine).”

If you remem­ber the Rea­gan years, you remem­ber liv­ing under the threat of mass extinc­tion by nuclear win­ter and radi­a­tion poi­son­ing. The end of the world seemed immi­nent at the end of the Cold War. And Michael Stipe, in a man­i­cal­ly dance­able tune (depend­ing on your lev­el of sta­mi­na), pro­claimed a need for soli­tude after issu­ing his many griev­ances.

It is still the end of the world, he says in a recent video address about coro­n­avirus on his web­site (and a short­er ver­sion released on social media), and “I do feel fine. I feel okay. The impor­tant part of that lyric, that song title, is ‘As We Know It.’ We’re about to go through—we are going through some­thing that none of us have ever encoun­tered before….”

The moment is unique, of world­wide his­tor­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance as was the bel­liger­ent arms race of the late eight­ies, the ter­ri­ble A.I.D.S. epi­dem­ic, and oth­er cat­a­stroph­ic events occur­ring when R.E.M.  released Doc­u­ment, the 1987 album that intro­duced mil­lions of young fans to art-punk genius­es Wire—whose “Strange” Stipe and com­pa­ny cov­er; to blues­man Light­nin’ Hop­kins and red-bait­ing sen­a­tor Joseph McCarthy, who lent their names to two songs; and to Lenny Bruce, pio­neer­ing 60s com­ic, who, like Stipe in the album’s Side One clos­er, is “not afraid” of earth­quakes, birds and snakes, aero­planes, and oth­er signs of the apoc­a­lypse. Things will change irrev­o­ca­bly, and life will prob­a­bly go on. In the mean­time, he says, “don’t mis-serve your own needs.”

You may not be sur­prised to learn the song re-entered the charts on March 13, 2020, as Poly­phon­ic informs us in their video at the top. “It’s easy to see why.” These days nuclear holo­caust seems low on the list of prob­a­ble caus­es for the world’s end, what with poten­tial eco­nom­ic col­lapse and more mas­sive cli­mate events fol­low­ing on COVID-19’s heels. Grim times indeed, as we know them, but they’re hard­ly the first we’ve faced in liv­ing mem­o­ry. Behind Stipe’s “glib irony” in “It’s the End of the World as We Know It” lies a fierce cri­tique of U.S. greed and vio­lence and, as always, an alter­na­tive ethos, one whose call we might espe­cial­ly heed in our days of iso­la­tion.

We’re eager to recon­nect in myr­i­ad ways, but time alone might not be such a bad idea. “Return, lis­ten to your­self churn,” Stipe sings, “lis­ten to your heart beat.” We can hear the final call for soli­tude as a dig at rugged indi­vid­u­al­ism, or a call to healthy intro­spec­tion. As the orig­i­nal video sug­gests, wad­ing through the clut­ter might help us reclaim the stuff that makes us our best selves. Along with issu­ing his PSA, Stipe has also released a video, above, of a new demo track, “No Time for Love Like Now.” Here, he ditch­es the arch­ness and anger of his fiery younger self for a plain­tive state­ment about what the world needs. You guessed it…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

R.E.M. Reveals the Secrets Behind Their Emo­tion­al­ly-Charged Songs: “Los­ing My Reli­gion” and “Try Not to Breathe”

Why R.E.M.’s 1991 Out of Time May Be the “Most Polit­i­cal­ly Impor­tant Album” Ever

R.E.M.’s “Los­ing My Reli­gion” Reworked from Minor to Major Scale

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

Join Choir! Choir! Choir! for a Community Singalong in Isolation

I love ya, and I think maybe if we sing togeth­er, well, we’d just feel a lit­tle bit bet­ter. Give it a try, okay? —Neil Dia­mond

Thus quoth singer-song­writer Neil Dia­mond on March 23, before launch­ing into his sur­pris­ing­ly stur­dy mon­ster hit, “Sweet Car­o­line,” hav­ing reworked its lyrics to pro­mote hand-wash­ing and social dis­tanc­ing to help con­trol the spread of COVID-19.

He’s not wrong about the ther­a­peu­tic ben­e­fits of group singing. Dit­to the imper­a­tive to resist gath­er­ing pub­licly, or even in the homes of extend­ed fam­i­ly and close friends, until this cri­sis is in the rear view.

Choir! Choir! Choir!, an ongo­ing com­mu­ni­ty sing that’s attained glob­al renown thanks to its fre­quent tours, char­i­ta­ble work, and the sup­port of such star­ry per­son­ages as Pat­ti Smith and David Byrne, has had to put the kibosh on live group events. (Check out their 2014 sin­ga­long of Dia­mond’s “Sweet Car­o­line,” above, for a taste of the pro­ceed­ings.)

With every­one stay­ing home, founders Nobu Adil­man and Dav­eed Gold­man quick­ly imple­ment­ed a dig­i­tal work around, invit­ing fans and first-timers alike to week­ly online sing-ins.

Their next Social Dis­tan-Sing-Along is com­ing up this Sat­ur­day, April 4th at 3pm EDT, fea­tur­ing a camp­fire-themed playlist:

“The Weight”

“Blowin’ In The Wind”

“Our House”

“Leav­ing On A Jet Plane”

“Redemp­tion Song”

“Talkin Bout A Rev­o­lu­tion”

“Dust In The Wind”

“Cats In The Cra­dle”

“Wild World”

(Sad­ly, no “Titan­ic,” but per­haps that one’s more sum­mer camp than camp­fire, and these days, it’s prob­a­bly best to side­step any num­ber, no mat­ter how sil­ly, that springs from mass casu­al­ties…)

Par­tic­i­pants are instruct­ed to print a file of the song lyrics in advance and show up to the dig­i­tal camp­fire (live stream­ing on YouTube or Face­book) with a cou­ple of devicesenough to fol­low along with Adil­man and Gold­man, while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly Zoom­ing in any friends you’ve pre-arranged to sing with.

(With 1000s attend­ing, one of Choir! Choir! Choir!’s usu­al joyslift­ing one’s voice with a vast cho­rus of most­ly strangersis a logis­ti­cal and tech­no­log­i­cal impos­si­bil­i­ty.)

Par­tic­i­pants are also encour­aged to share footage of them­selves singing along, using the hash­tag #Nev­er­StopSing­ingthough we remind our non-per­for­mance-ori­ent­ed read­ers that this is mere­ly a sug­ges­tion.

Choir! Choir! Choir in iso­la­tion may well attract show­er Sina­tras who’d nev­er dream of open­ing their mouths at an in-per­son event.

It’s a gold­en oppor­tu­ni­ty for the vocal­ly shy to become part of one of the biggest choirs in his­to­ry, secure in the knowl­edge that the only peo­ple to hear them croak­ing away will be the cat, the dog, any human co-inhab­i­tants… and, oh dear, what about neigh­bors in the imme­di­ate vicin­i­ty?

Don’t wor­ry about the neigh­bors. In fact, prick up your earsyou may hear them singing the exact same tunes.

To get you in the mood, here are some of our favorites from Choir! Choir! Choir!’s clas­sic playlist:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ital­ians’ Night­ly Sin­ga­longs Prove That Music Soothes the Sav­age Beast of Coro­n­avirus Quar­an­tine & Self-Iso­la­tion

65,000 Fans Break Into a Sin­ga­long of Queen’s “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” at a Green Day Con­cert in London’s Hyde Park

Good Med­i­cine: The Band’s Clas­sic Song, “The Weight,” Sung by Rob­bie Robert­son, Ringo Starr & Spe­cial Guests from Around the World

Pat­ti Smith Sings “Peo­ple Have the Pow­er” with a Choir of 250 Fel­low Singers

Bri­an Eno Lists the Ben­e­fits of Singing: A Long Life, Increased Intel­li­gence, and a Sound Civ­i­liza­tion

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Like Choir! Choir! Choir!, she has been crowd­sourc­ing art in iso­la­tion, most recent­ly a hasti­ly assem­bled trib­ute to the clas­sic 60s social line dance, The Madi­son. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew Turns 50: Celebrate the Funk-Jazz-Psych-Rock Masterpiece

I shouldn’t have to tell you that Miles Davis’ Bitch­es Brew, released fifty years ago this month, is a ground­break­ing record. The funk-jazz-psych-rock mas­ter­piece has been hand­ed that award in “best of” lists for half a cen­tu­ry. “Bitch­es Brew is NOT LIKE OTHER records of its time, or any oth­er time,” Rick Frys­tak announced emphat­i­cal­ly on the Amoe­ba Records blog last year, on the 50th anniver­sary of the album’s 1969 “hatch­ing” onstage and in the stu­dio. How could it be oth­er­wise?

Davis “gave his band very lit­tle instruc­tion” about what to do, bassist and Jazz Night in Amer­i­ca host Chris­t­ian McBride tells NPR’s Audie Cor­nish. “Miles might come in with sheet music with, like, four bars. And then you just, do what you do.”

Or as gui­tarist John McLaugh­lin remem­bers it, in the clip above from The Miles Davis Sto­ry, “I don’t think even Miles had a clear idea of what he want­ed to do. But he was a man of such impec­ca­ble intu­ition that the moment that thing hap­pened, he knew it. He said, ‘that’s it.’”

“What got record­ed was the process,” says bassist Dave Hol­land, of fig­ur­ing out, for exam­ple, how to make three key­boards at once work. Author and Miles Davis schol­ar Paul Tin­gen tones down the idea that the band made it all up on the spot. “Three of the pieces had already been bro­ken in dur­ing live con­certs,” he writes, such as the live clip of “Bitch­es Brew” in Copen­hagen, 1969, above. And many of the musi­cians did get to rehearse before the stu­dio ses­sions.

But dur­ing much of the album’s mak­ing, Miles “brought in these musi­cal sketch­es that nobody had seen,” Davis him­self says, and the band, fea­tur­ing 13 musi­cians in total, found their way. Tin­gen writes:

On the third day the rhythm sec­tion con­sist­ed of as many as 11 play­ers: three key­boardists, elec­tric gui­tar, two bass­es, four drummers/percussionists and a bass clar­inet. Miles had pulled out the stops in his search for a heav­ier bot­tom end.

The album’s heav­i­ness, Davis’ tape echo, and McLaugh­lin’s squeal­ing, dis­tort­ed gui­tar turned off many jaz­zheads. “A lot of peo­ple felt that he was an artis­tic trai­tor,” McBride explains. “But I think that there were a num­ber of col­lege kids who were lis­ten­ing to pro­gres­sive rock [and] soul music who absolute­ly loved this record.” Davis was booked to open for the Grate­ful Dead, Neil Young, and the Steve Miller Band. A new gen­er­a­tion was turned on to jazz almost overnight.

After Bitch­es Brew, jazz kept fus­ing with rock instru­men­ta­tion and over­drive, “from Chick Corea with Return to For­ev­er and Wayne Short­er with Weath­er Report to Her­bie Han­cock with The Headhunters”—and, of course, McLaughlin’s Mahav­ish­nu Orches­tra. As Coltrane’s exper­i­men­tal 60s records had done, Davis’ bedrock fusion album freed rock from its for­mu­las, giv­ing it space to spread out and explore. Even Radio­head cit­ed it as an influ­ence on their ground­break­ing 1997 Ok Com­put­er. “It was build­ing some­thing up and watch­ing it fall apart,” says Thom Yorke, “that’s the beau­ty of it.”

The album’s ini­tial rejec­tion in jazz cir­cles didn’t last, as any­one famil­iar with the music’s direc­tion knows. Davis deter­mined its course in the 70s (as cov­er artist Mati Kar­wein deter­mined its look). “I’m not sure if jazz ever got unplugged,” says McBride, and influ­en­tial con­tem­po­rary jazz fusion­ists like Kamasi Wash­ing­ton, Thun­der­cat, and The Comet is Com­ing prove his point. Fifty years ago, the ground was bro­ken for exper­i­men­tal elec­tric jazz, and musi­cians are still build­ing on Miles’ Bitch­es Brew intu­itions.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Miles Davis Icon­ic 1959 Album Kind of Blue Turns 60: Revis­it the Album That Changed Amer­i­can Music

Hear a 65-Hour, Chrono­log­i­cal Playlist of Miles Davis’ Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Jazz Albums

Her­bie Han­cock Explains the Big Les­son He Learned From Miles Davis: Every Mis­take in Music, as in Life, Is an Oppor­tu­ni­ty

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

The Band’s Classic Song, “The Weight,” Sung by Musicians Around the World: With Robbie Robertson, Ringo Starr & Other Special Guests

Rob­bie Robertson’s “The Weight,” the Band’s most beloved song, has the qual­i­ty of Dylan’s impres­sion­is­tic nar­ra­tives. Ellip­ti­cal vignettes that seem to make very lit­tle sense at first lis­ten, with a cho­rus that cuts right to the heart of the human predica­ment. “Robert­son admits in his auto­bi­og­ra­phy,” notes Patrick Doyle at Rolling Stone, “that he strug­gled to artic­u­late to pro­duc­er John Simon what the song was even about.” An artist needn’t under­stand a cre­ation for it to res­onate with lis­ten­ers.

A read of the “The Weight”’s lyrics make its poignant themes evident—each stan­za intro­duces char­ac­ters who illus­trate some sor­row or small kind­ness. The cho­rus offers what so many peo­ple seem to crave these days: a promise of rest from cease­less toil, free­dom from con­stant trans­ac­tions, a com­mu­ni­ty that shoul­ders everyone’s bur­dens…. “It’s almost like it’s good med­i­cine,” Robert­son told Doyle, “and it’s so suit­able right now.” He refers specif­i­cal­ly to the song’s revival in a dom­i­nant musi­cal form of our iso­la­tion days—the online sing-along.

Though its lyrics aren’t near­ly as easy to remem­ber as, say, “Lean on Me,” Robertson’s clas­sic, espe­cial­ly the big har­monies of its cho­rus (which every­one knows by heart), is ide­al for big ensem­bles like the globe-span­ning col­lec­tion assem­bled by Play­ing for Change, “a group ded­i­cat­ed to ‘open­ing up how peo­ple see the world through the lens of music and art.” The group’s pro­duc­ers, Doyle writes, “recent­ly spent two years film­ing artists around the world, from Japan to Bahrain to Los Ange­les, per­form­ing the song,” with Ringo Starr on drums and Robert­son on rhythm gui­tar. They began on the 50th anniver­sary of the song’s release.

The per­for­mances they cap­tured are flaw­less, and mixed togeth­er seam­less­ly. If you want to know how this was achieved, watch the short behind the scenes video above with pro­duc­er Sebas­t­ian Robert­son, who hap­pens to be Rob­bie’s son. He starts by prais­ing the stel­lar con­tri­bu­tions of Larkin Poe, two sis­ters whose root­sy coun­try rock updates the All­man Broth­ers for the 21st cen­tu­ry. But there are no slouch­es in the bunch (don’t be inti­mat­ed out of your own group sing-alongs by the tal­ent on dis­play here). The song res­onates in a way that con­nects, as “The Weight”’s cho­rus con­nects its non-sequitur stan­zas, many dis­parate sto­ries and voic­es.

Robert­son was thrilled with the final prod­uct. “There’s a guy on a sitar!” he enthus­es. “There’s a guy play­ing an oud, one of my favorite instru­ments.” The song sug­gests there’s “some­thing spir­i­tu­al, mag­i­cal, unsus­pect­ing” that can come from times of dark­ness, and that we’d all feel a whole lot bet­ter if we learned to take care of each oth­er. The Play­ing for Change ver­sion “screams of uni­ty,” he says, “and I hope it spreads.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stream Marc Maron’s Excel­lent, Long Inter­view with The Band’s Rob­bie Robert­son

Watch The Band Play “The Weight,” “Up On Crip­ple Creek” and More in Rare 1970 Con­cert Footage

Ital­ians’ Night­ly Sin­ga­longs Prove That Music Soothes the Sav­age Beast of Coro­n­avirus Quar­an­tine & Self-Iso­la­tion

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

Bob Dylan Releases a Cryptic 17-Minute Song about the JFK Assassination: Hear a “Murder Most Foul”

Like an Old Tes­ta­ment prophet with smart­phone, Bob Dylan has appeared the midst of cat­a­stro­phe to drop a new pre­vi­ous­ly unre­leased track, “Mur­der Most Foul,” on Twit­ter. Osten­si­bly a 17-minute song about JFK’s assas­si­na­tion, it’s “the first evi­dence of orig­i­nal song­writ­ing that we’ve had in eight years from one of the most orig­i­nal song­writ­ers of our era,” writes Kevin Dettmar, Pro­fes­sor of Eng­lish at Pomona Col­lege, for The New York­er.

The move seems like a weird one—“’weird’ with its full Shake­speare­an force, as in the ‘weird sis­ters’ of ‘Mac­beth.’” Its title, how­ev­er, comes from Ham­let. Uttered by the ghost of Hamlet’s father, the phrase shows us the mur­dered king pro­nounc­ing judg­ment on his own death. It is also the title of the third Miss Marple film, released in the U.S. in 1964, the same year (to the month) that the War­ren com­mis­sion sub­mit­ted its report to Lyn­don John­son.

Is Dylan pulling us into what may be the most bot­tom­less of mod­ern con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries, with a Shake­speare­an allu­sion sug­gest­ing we might hear the song as ema­nat­ing from Kennedy him­self? He’s more than aware of what he’s doing with the many spe­cif­ic ref­er­ences to the mur­der, draw­ing out the most com­mit­ted of con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists in YouTube com­ments. As Andy Greene writes at Rolling Stone, “Mur­der Most Foul” is:

Packed with ref­er­ences only JFK buffs will like­ly rec­og­nize, like the ‘triple under­pass’ near Dealey Plaza, the removal of his brain dur­ing the autop­sy, and the ‘three bums comin’ all dressed in rags’ cap­tured on the Zaprud­er film that con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists have been obsess­ing over for decades. Clear­ly, Dylan has spent a lot of time read­ing books and watch­ing doc­u­men­taries about this.

There is so much more besides. Dylan weaves dense­ly allu­sive texts, just as anoth­er poet to whom he bears some com­par­i­son, John Mil­ton, whose work has been back­ground for Dylan’s song­writ­ing for decades, includ­ing a sly allu­sion to Par­adise Lost in 1965’s “Des­o­la­tion Row,” anoth­er prophet­ic work that stretch­es over the ten-minute mark (and ends with pas­sen­gers on the Titan­ic shout­ing “Which side are you on?”)

In 2006, Dylan opened an episode of his Theme Time Radio Hour broad­cast with lines from the first book of Par­adise Lost: describ­ing Satan “hurled head­long flam­ing from the ethe­re­al sky.” Dylan has long been obsessed with the Dev­il, as lit­er­ary schol­ar Aidan Day argues in a com­par­i­son of Dylan and Mil­ton. Like­wise, he is obsessed with apoc­a­lyp­tic falls from grace. Songs abound with images of the pow­er­ful brought low, the low­ly brought low­er, and the whole world sink­ing like an ocean lin­er. He returned to the theme in 2012’s “The Tem­pest,” a 14-minute epic about the Titan­ic.

Why JFK, and why now? As he vague­ly notes, the song was “record­ed a while back.” Dettmar esti­mates some­time in the last decade. Does it live up to Dylan’s ear­li­er epics? Hear it above and judge for your­self. (And see many of its lyri­cal ref­er­ences at its Genius page.) Dettmar calls its first half “dog­ger­el” and the open­ing lines do sound like a fifth-grade his­to­ry pre­sen­ta­tion: “’Twas a dark day in Dal­las, Novem­ber, ‘63/The day that would live on in infamy.”

Is this cliché or a satire of cliché? (Dylan was fond of “ ‘Twas the Night Before Christ­mas.”) Things soon take a dark­er turn, with lines full of Mil­ton­ian por­tent: assas­si­na­tion becomes regi­cide: The day they blew out the brains of the king/Thousands were watch­ing, no one saw a thing.

Allu­sions tum­ble out, line after line. Once Dylan gets to Wolf­man Jack, verse two begins, and “some­thing amaz­ing hap­pens,” writes Dettmar. “We’re pre­sent­ed with anoth­er ver­sion of the Great Amer­i­can Songbook.”—JFK’s death now pre­lude for all the cul­tur­al shifts to come. “Wolf­man, oh Wolf­man, oh Wolf­man, howl/Rub-a-dub-dub, it’s a mur­der most foul.” NPR’s Bob Boilen and Ann Pow­ers have com­piled a playlist of the dozens of songs ref­er­enced in the sec­ond half of “Mur­der Most Foul,” a com­pi­la­tion of the music Dylan admires most.

What is he up to in this track? Is “Mur­der Most Foul” a sum­ma­tion of Dylan’s career? Dyla­nol­o­gists will be puz­zling it out for years. But the last line of his Twit­ter announce­ment sure sounds like a cryp­tic farewell wrapped in a warn­ing: “Stay safe,” Dylan writes, “stay obser­vant, and may God be with you.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Mas­sive 55-Hour Chrono­log­i­cal Playlist of Bob Dylan Songs: Stream 763 Tracks

Hear Bob Dylan’s New­ly-Released Nobel Lec­ture: A Med­i­ta­tion on Music, Lit­er­a­ture & Lyrics

Bob Dylan’s Thanks­giv­ing Radio Show: A Playlist of 18 Delec­table Songs

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

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