Musicians Around the World Play “Lean on Me,” the Uplifting Song by Bill Withers (RIP)

A few weeks back (but what seems like a dif­fer­ent world now) we told you about the Play­ing for Change project, which fea­tures cov­ers of well loved pop songs played by a group of inter­na­tion­al musicians…the gim­mick being that each musi­cian is record­ed in their own coun­try and only come togeth­er in the mix.

Sud­den­ly, it seems that Play­ing for Change was ahead of the curve, because this is the way the entire world is liv­ing right now. Peo­ple are mak­ing art in quar­an­tine, join­ing togeth­er only through the mag­ic of 21st cen­tu­ry tech­nol­o­gy.

But in hon­or of the pass­ing of Bill With­ers, who left us last week at 81 (not, we should men­tion, because of COVID-19), here’s Play­ing for Change with their ver­sion of “Lean on Me.” With­ers’ mes­sage of love and com­mu­ni­ty is exact­ly what we need right now.

In a 2015 Rolling Stone pro­file Quest­love called him “the last African-Amer­i­can Everyman…Jordan’s ver­ti­cal jump has to be high­er than every­one. Michael Jack­son has to defy grav­i­ty. On the oth­er side of the coin, we’re often viewed as prim­i­tive ani­mals. We rarely land in the mid­dle. Bill With­ers is the clos­est thing black peo­ple have to a Bruce Spring­steen.”

That arti­cle adds that With­ers was so long out of the spot­light that many already thought he was dead. And now he’s passed dur­ing a grim time, it seemed like there was one full day to mourn him before the next round of mor­tal coil shuf­flings. (We’re here to cel­e­brate him for a lit­tle bit longer).

This cov­er fea­tures Renard Poché (New Orleans) on gui­tar, Rober­to Luvi (Livorno, Italy) on slide, Grand­pa Eliot (New Orleans), Clarence Bekker (Ams­ter­dam), Sar­i­tah (Mel­bourne, Aus­tralia), and Titi Tsira (Gugulethu, South Africa) on vocals, aid­ed by Keiko Koma­ki (Kagoshi­ma, Japan) on key­boards, Toby Williams (Chica­go) on drums, One eat One (Livorno, Italy) on elec­tron­ics, Mari­achi group Las Rosas Angeli­nas (Los Ange­les) on strings, Alan­na Vicente (Los Ange­les) on trom­bone, and the chil­dren of Tin­tale Vil­lage in Nepal on har­mo­ni­um.

The track was orig­i­nal­ly com­mis­sioned by the Bill & Melin­da Gates Foun­da­tion for The Art of Sav­ing a Life, which aims to tell the sto­ry of vac­cines and their impor­tance to chil­dren over the world. (I would hope that we under­stand the urgency of vac­cines right about now.)

Bill With­ers was an acci­den­tal hit­mak­er, a nat­ur­al tune­smith, who didn’t enter the busi­ness until his 30s and then dropped out of it less than ten years lat­er. No come­back tour, no duets with an up-and-com­ing star. (Though Quest­love was deter­mined to pro­duce one final album). What he has left is time­less, and his music is still there to get us through these trou­bling times.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Decon­struct­ing Ste­vie Wonder’s Ode to Jazz and His Hero Duke Elling­ton: A Great Break­down of “Sir Duke”

Musi­cians Around the World Play The Band’s Clas­sic Song, “The Weight,” with Help from Rob­bie Robert­son and Ringo Starr

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

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

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