Whose music do you put on when the hol­i­day sea­son comes around? Per­haps musi­cians like Lon­nie Hol­ley, Gur­ru­mul, Erkin Koray, and Juan Luis Guer­ra? Maybe you’ve just thrilled with recog­ni­tion at one or more of those names, or maybe you’ve nev­er heard of any of them — but in either case, you should get ready for a high­ly uncon­ven­tion­al hol­i­day expe­ri­ence fea­tur­ing their songs and those of many oth­ers, all of them curat­ed by David Byrne. Each month the peri­patet­ic, oft-col­lab­o­rat­ing musi­cian and for­mer Talk­ing Heads front­man posts a new playlist on Radio David Byrne, and the lat­est, “Eclec­tic for the Hol­i­days,” will get us into a kind of sea­son­al spir­it into which we’ve nev­er got before.

“So… who rec­om­mends this stuff to me?” Byrne asks. “I’ve known Lon­nie Hol­ley as an artist for quite some time. I saw him do a show at Nation­al Saw­dust not too long ago with trom­bon­ist Dave Nel­son, who toured with St. Vin­cent and I a few years ago.”

“I heard an orches­tral inter­pre­ta­tion of this song by Gur­ru­mul when I was wait­ing to do an inter­view at the radio sta­tion in Mel­bourne, Aus­tralia. I asked, ‘Whose music is that?’ ” “Erkin Koray I heard after first hear­ing Barış Manço, who may have been rec­om­mend­ed by some friends in Istan­bul when I was there years ago… Turkey had a seri­ous psy­che­del­ic peri­od.” “Juan Luis Guer­ra may have been rec­om­mend­ed many years ago by music jour­nal­ist Daisann McLane at a music fes­ti­val in Carta­ge­na, Colom­bia.”

The 41-song jour­ney that is “Eclec­tic for the Hol­i­days,” which you can stream below or on Byrne’s offi­cial site, offers not just a chance to hap­pen upon intrigu­ing artists you’d nev­er come across before — as hap­pened to Byrne in all those chance encoun­ters that went into its con­struc­tion — but a break from the same fif­teen or twen­ty songs that have long dom­i­nat­ed the hol­i­day-sea­son rota­tion in homes and pub­lic spaces around the world. The hol­i­days them­selves teach us that tra­di­tion has its place, but Byrne, whose com­pul­sion to dis­cov­er new music from an ever far­ther-flung range of soci­eties and sub­cul­tures, shows us that you can’t let them get you com­fort­able enough to close your ears.

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Radio David Byrne: Stream Free Music Playlists Cre­at­ed Every Month by the Front­man of Talk­ing Heads

David Byrne Cre­ates a Playlist of Cre­ative Music From Africa & the Caribbean—or What One Name­less Pres­i­dent Has Called “Shit­hole Coun­tries”

Hear Paul McCartney’s Exper­i­men­tal Christ­mas Mix­tape: A Rare & For­got­ten Record­ing from 1965

Stream 22 Hours of Funky, Rock­ing & Swing­ing Christ­mas Albums: From James Brown and John­ny Cash to Christo­pher Lee & The Ven­tures

Hear the Christ­mas Car­ols Made by Alan Turing’s Com­put­er: Cut­ting-Edge Ver­sions of “Jin­gle Bells” and “Good King Wences­las” (1951)

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 or on Face­book.

Update: Accord­ing to the BBC, Peter Green died peace­ful­ly in his sleep this week­end, at the age of 73.

“Of all the gui­tar giants to emerge from the British blues boom,” writes Stu­art Pen­ny at Emp­ty Mir­ror, “Peter Green was per­haps the most nat­u­ral­ly gift­ed.” After replac­ing Eric Clap­ton in John May­all & the Blues­break­ers (and earn­ing the nick­name “The Green God”), the gui­tarist formed his own band, orig­i­nal­ly giv­en the unwieldy name “Peter Green’s Fleet­wood Mac fea­tur­ing Jere­my Spencer.” Soon short­ened to Fleet­wood Mac, the band record­ed their debut, epony­mous album in 1968, and went on in the fol­low­ing year to spend “more weeks on the UK sin­gles charts than the Bea­t­les, the first time any­one had achieved that feat since 1963.”

Sad­ly, Green suc­cumbed to what Pen­ny describes as “the ear­ly onset of men­tal ill­ness thought to be the result of an unso­licit­ed LSD expe­ri­ence in Munich, Ger­many.” He left his band and joined the ranks of oth­er wild­ly tal­ent­ed 60s musi­cians like Syd Bar­rett, Roky Erick­son, and Moby Grape’s Skip Spence whose careers were cut short by seri­ous men­tal health issues appar­ent­ly brought on, or wors­ened, by seri­ous drug use.

Green began to be for­got­ten, espe­cial­ly as his lega­cy with Fleet­wood Mac was over­shad­owed by albums like the leg­endary Rumours and the band’s sec­ond self-titled record.

1975’s Fleet­wood Mac was like a reboot of the band after the intro­duc­tion of Ste­vie Nicks and Lind­sey Buck­ing­ham, who resist­ed play­ing any of the old mate­r­i­al. Fans may get to hear those old songs live again—Fleetwood Mac is back and tour­ing, and they’ve even reignit­ed old feuds by fir­ing Buck­ing­ham (he’s suing, of course). The move gives them the free­dom draw from their back cat­a­log again. Nicks remarked in May, “we’re gonna lock in to the his­to­ry of Fleet­wood Mac, which we were nev­er able to do since 1975, because cer­tain peo­ple in the band weren’t real­ly inter­est­ed in doing that.”

Green won’t take part in the band’s revis­it­ing of old mate­r­i­al. But he deserves full cred­it for the band’s suc­cess, despite its many suc­cess­ful rein­ven­tions, as Mick Fleet­wood told the Irish Times last year.

For his lega­cy I think it’s impor­tant we remem­ber that Fleet­wood Mac was, first and fore­most, a blues band. We all played and loved blues. And long after Peter left, we went to Chess Records in Chica­go where we record­ed with Willie Dixon and Bud­dy Guy. Can you imag­ine how that made us feel? Such an incred­i­ble expe­ri­ence could not have hap­pened with­out Peter because, even though he wasn’t with us, the rea­son there’s a Fleet­wood Mac at all is because of him.

Green made four albums with the band before depart­ing in 1970 and scored a hit with the sin­gle “Black Mag­ic Woman,” before Car­los San­tana made the song his own. Like Bar­rett, Spence, and Erick­son, he con­tin­ued mak­ing music after leav­ing his famous band, record­ing in the ear­ly 70s with for­mer band­mate John May­all. In 1972, he did a ses­sion with BB King, who called him the only British blues gui­tarist “who gave me the cold sweats.” Vot­ed the third great­est gui­tarist of all time by Mojo (after Hen­drix and Steve Crop­per), Green is still revered by diehard fans and gui­tar play­ers of all kinds, even if his strict­ly blues-rock ver­sion of Fleet­wood Mac nev­er had as wide an appeal as the pop jug­ger­naut the band lat­er became.

But the low pro­file was part of Green’s per­son­al­i­ty. He has always bris­tled at the acclaim heaped on his play­ing, telling The Tele­graph in 1996 “If I was a gui­tar hero, then what does that make my mas­ters and teach­ers?” As Mick Fleet­wood puts it, “Peter could have been the stereo­typ­i­cal gui­tar play­er and con­trol freak. But that was­n’t his style. He named the band after the bass play­er and drum­mer, for Christ’s sake.” Green’s col­lab­o­ra­tive spir­it and self-effac­ing man­ner may be rare qual­i­ties for a rock star, but he nev­er seemed to aspire to that role. Nonethe­less, he left his mark, as All­mu­sic’s Thom Jurek writes, as “the ter­mi­nal­ly shy skin­ny kid who could rain down fire from the heav­ens and draw water from the wells of hell on a gui­tar.”

See and hear some of Green’s clas­sic per­for­mances with Fleet­wood Mac in the videos here (some with out-of-sync audio), includ­ing “Black Mag­ic Woman” at the top. And just above, see a much mel­low­er Green in a much more recent per­for­mance play­ing “Alba­tross” with an acoustic ensem­ble.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

How Fleet­wood Mac Makes A Song: A Video Essay Explor­ing the “Son­ic Paint­ings” on the Clas­sic Album, Rumours

Ste­vie Nicks “Shows Us How to Kick Ass in High-Heeled Boots” in a 1983 Women’s Self Defense Man­u­al

23-Year-Old Eric Clap­ton Demon­strates the Ele­ments of His Gui­tar Sound (1968)

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

Since 1946, The Unit­ed States Army Field Band has trav­eled through­out the world, per­form­ing at pub­lic con­certs, school assem­blies, edu­ca­tion­al out­reach pro­grams, and oth­er venues. Above you can watch one of the band’s per­form­ing units–the Six-String Sol­diers–play an acoustic ver­sion of Pink Floy­d’s “Wish You Were Here.” Because we all know some­one we sure­ly miss. To explore more of their work, see their cov­er ver­sions of The All­man Broth­ers’ “Ram­blin’ Man” and The Bea­t­les’ “Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er.”

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 and BlueSky.

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!

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load Pink Floyd’s 1975 Com­ic Book Pro­gram for The Dark Side of the Moon Tour

How Pink Floyd’s “Com­fort­ably Numb” Was Born From an Argu­ment Between Roger Waters & David Gilmour

Under­stand­ing Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here, Their Trib­ute to Depart­ed Band­mate Syd Bar­rett

I remem­ber the ear­ly part of 1984 when Queen’s “Radio Gaga,” their sin­gle from The Works album with a video that mixed in clips from Fritz Lang’s Metrop­o­lis, was played near­ly every hour on MTV. Or it least it seemed that way. And then in April, the band released their fol­low-up sin­gle, “I Want to Break Free,” seen above. This is when things got weird for Queen state­side and where truth starts to split from rumor.

In the fine tra­di­tion of British pan­tomime and Mon­ty Python, the band appear in drag, with Mer­cury in a black leather skirt vac­u­um­ing the floor of a typ­i­cal Eng­lish liv­ing room, Bri­an May in curlers and night­dress; John Dea­con as a more con­ser­v­a­tive grand­moth­er; and Roger Tay­lor as a school­girl. British view­ers would have got the joke–the style and dress and set­ting was a direct par­o­dy of pop­u­lar work­ing class soap opera Coro­na­tion Street, and its first shot of chim­neys and row hous­es was a fur­ther give­away.

“We had done some real­ly seri­ous, epic videos in the past, and we just thought we’d have some fun,” said Roger Tay­lor. “We want­ed peo­ple to know that we did­n’t take our­selves too seri­ous­ly, that we could still laugh at our­selves. I think we proved that.”

But some Amer­i­cans appar­ent­ly did take it seri­ous­ly and believed the video to be pro­mot­ing cross-dress­ing. (There’s no men­tion whether they thought the mid­dle sec­tion, fea­tur­ing mem­bers of the Roy­al Bal­let and a par­o­dy of Nijinsky’s After­noon of a Faun, pro­mot­ed bal­let, leo­tards, or Claude Debussy).

Now most accounts from here on out say that MTV banned the video, despite the song being in the charts for eight weeks. It failed to be the block­buster hit like “Radio Gaga,” for sure, and Queen nev­er again real­ly had a foothold on Amer­i­can pop cul­ture until Live Aid, and even then their appear­ance meant more to the Brits than the Yanks. Queen went from a clas­sic rock act to some­thing the British got and the Amer­i­cans didn’t.

Bri­an May agreed that the video was a turn­ing point when he sat for a Ter­ry Gross inter­view in 2010:

I remem­ber doing a pro­mo tour for this song that we did, which was called “I Want to Break Free.” Now we made a video for that, which was a pas­tiche of an Eng­lish soap called “Coro­na­tion Street,” and we dressed up as the char­ac­ters in that soap, and they were female char­ac­ters. So we’re dress­ing up as girls — as women and we had a fan­tas­tic laugh doing it. It was hilar­i­ous to do it. And all around the world peo­ple laughed and they got the joke and they sort of under­stood it.

I remem­ber being on the pro­mo tour in the Mid­west of Amer­i­ca and peo­ple’s faces turn­ing ashen and they would say, no, we can’t play this. We can’t pos­si­bly play this. You know, it looks homo­sex­u­al. And I went, so? But it was a huge deal. And I know that it real­ly dam­aged our sort of whole rela­tion­ship with cer­tain­ly radio in this coun­try and prob­a­bly the pub­lic as well…

But it was very dif­fi­cult for us to sort of get back. And there’s a whole kind of gap in Queen his­to­ry if you view it from Amer­i­ca. And Fred­die was very aware of that. And we nev­er real­ly came back and toured the way we should’ve done. You know, every place else in the world, we played foot­ball sta­di­ums. But it nev­er hap­pened in the States. And Fred­die, when I played him this thing, said — (laugh­ter) well, he said, you know, it might do for us what noth­ing else would do, and he was dead right.

You know, it’s amaz­ing that even the fact that Fred­die died did­n’t make that much of a dif­fer­ence. But the fact that Wayne’s World put it in their film did make a dif­fer­ence. And I sup­pose the quote that I’m steer­ing clear of is that Fred­die, at one point, said to me, you know, I sup­pose I’ll have to [exple­tive] die before we ever get big in Amer­i­ca again.

While that is true, I’m not too sure about this “banned video” busi­ness. I saw this video a lot on MTV. I remem­ber both my par­ents laugh­ing at the video because it remind­ed them of the Pythons. And apart from a line repeat­ed over and over on the Inter­net and in some very recent Queen biogra­phies, it’s hard to find con­tem­po­rary proof that this ban hap­pened and when.

Being banned has often been great pub­lic­i­ty and often ginned up con­tro­ver­sy. But if you want to see a def­i­nite­ly banned Queen video, check out “Body Lan­guage,” from their 1982 album Hot Space. Filled with sweaty body parts, plen­ty of leather, and set in some sort of uni­sex bath­house, this indeed was banned by MTV. Believe me, I would have remem­bered see­ing this at the time if they hadn’t.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Mak­ing of “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody”: Take a Deep Dive Into the Icon­ic Song with Queen’s 2002 Mini Doc­u­men­tary

The Joy of Expe­ri­enc­ing Queen’s Bohemi­an Rhap­sody for the Very First Time: Watch Three Reac­tion Videos

Hear How Queen’s “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” Would Sound If Sung by John­ny Cash, David Bowie, Janis Joplin, Frank Sina­tra & 38 Oth­er Artists

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.

Image by Dar­ren Swim, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Every­one knows the punch­line “more cow­bell” from SNL’s affec­tion­ate jab at the Blue Öys­ter Cult’s enthu­si­asm. But how many peo­ple know the true sto­ry of “more barn”?

Too pre­cious few, I’d say.

It’s a clas­sic from that icon of clas­sic rock, Neil Young, a yarn—as told by Gra­ham Nash—that defies par­o­dy, and beau­ti­ful­ly illus­trates the absur­di­ty of Neil Young’s com­mit­ment to raw, rus­tic authen­tic­i­ty. For his ded­i­cat­ed fans, Neil’s ram­shackle meth­ods always yield wor­thy results. Even when he’s off, he’s so damned into it, it’s hard to ever fault him.

And when he’s on—in mas­ter­pieces like 1972’s Har­vest—Neil does no wrong. His tal­ents stretch beyond intense­ly impas­sioned songcraft and deliv­ery to a holis­tic appre­ci­a­tion of sound in all its forms (and a loathing for tech­nol­o­gy that does sound an injus­tice).

In the inter­view above with NPR’s Ter­ry Gross after the pub­li­ca­tion of his book Wild Tales: A Rock & Roll Life, Young’s erst­while CSNY band­mate Nash recounts the day Young first played him Har­vest:

The man is total­ly com­mit­ted to the muse of music. And he’ll do any­thing for good music. And some­times it’s very strange. I was at Neil’s ranch one day just south of San Fran­cis­co, and he has a beau­ti­ful lake with red-wing black­birds. And he asked me if I want­ed to hear his new album, “Har­vest.” And I said sure, let’s go into the stu­dio and lis­ten.

Oh, no. That’s not what Neil had in mind. He said get into the row­boat.

I said get into the row­boat? He said, yeah, we’re going to go out into the mid­dle of the lake. Now, I think he’s got a lit­tle cas­sette play­er with him or a lit­tle, you know, ear­ly dig­i­tal for­mat play­er. So I’m think­ing I’m going to wear head­phones and lis­ten in the rel­a­tive peace in the mid­dle of Neil’s lake.

Oh, no. He has his entire house as the left speak­er and his entire barn as the right speak­er. And I heard “Har­vest” com­ing out of these two incred­i­bly large loud speak­ers loud­er than hell. It was unbe­liev­able. Elliot Maz­er, who pro­duced Neil, pro­duced “Har­vest,” came down to the shore of the lake and he shout­ed out to Neil: How was that, Neil?

And I swear to god, Neil Young shout­ed back: More barn!

Now, whether or not that last bit is a Nash inven­tion, it must for­ev­er remain the punch­line of the sto­ry, which must always be referred to as “more barn.” But there’s no rea­son to think it didn’t hap­pen just the way Nash tells it.

In the film at the top, Young lis­tens to play­back of Har­vest through the barn, com­ments on the “nat­ur­al echo” of its rever­ber­a­tions from yon­der hill­side, drinks a Coors, and lounges in the straw. (He also talks in earnest depth about the eth­i­cal and per­son­al chal­lenges of being a “rich hip­pie.”)

I’ve heard this album count­less times through head­phones and stereo, sur­round, and car speak­ers, but until I can yell out “more barn!” I’m con­vinced I have not tru­ly heard it at all.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Neil Young Per­forms Clas­sic Songs in 1971 Con­cert: “Old Man,” “Heart of Gold” & More

Neil Young Busk­ing in Glas­gow, 1976: The Sto­ry Behind the Footage

When Neil Young & Rick James Cre­at­ed the 60’s Motown Band, The Mynah Birds

Miles Davis Opens for Neil Young and “That Sor­ry-Ass Cat” Steve Miller at The Fill­more East (1970)

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